Invasion of Kuwait: The American Intelligence Account | John Kiriakou | Bidoun Waraq Podcast

[00:01] 2nd of August, I was 25 years old and I'm standing in the Oval Office with the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, the CIA director. The American ambassador in Baghdad at the time was April Glassby. That's where the conspiracy theory comes from uh in terms of there were people who wanted [music] Saddam to >> We had zero national interest in Saddam invading Kuwait. >> What [music] about the oil? And what happened next took everyone by surprise. Literally the entire Iraqi

[00:34] military is heading south. >> Invasion. Invasion. Going to take the whole the whole country. The morning of the invasion, the Iraqis [music] announced that Ahmed Khib would be the governor of occupied K. At 3:00 that afternoon, [music] Margaret Thatcher called him. She was the prime minister of the UK, the iron lady, right? She said, "George, now is not the time to go wobbly." Asel Gabandi, she was a bonafide hero.

[01:05] What did you find about Saddam before the invasion? Our bottom line psychological [music] analysis was that he was a sociopath. >> Whenever something like this happens, the sirens, it's it makes me think of >> Yes. If we feel this, what did they feel? What happened? >> Mhm. I'll never forget the deputy national security adviser having no shoes. That's like the one image [music] that sticks with me the most from

[01:35] September 11th. >> Yeah. Right. >> This is the guy who's supposed to be protecting us and leading the country and he's running away with no shoes. >> Never saw anything like it. >> It's a disappointment, right? >> Mhm. It >> was a complete failure of leadership. And then Richard Pearl, the neoconservative, on the 12th of September, he went to the White House and he said, "You know, we have to attack Iraq, right?"

[02:06] >> 12th of September, right? >> He was the one that that came up with the idea. We have to attack Iraq. This is our opportunity. Next thing you know, we're going to circle back to this, but before we we we get there, we're going to speak about Kuwait September 11th, if that makes sense. >> Sure. >> Um 1990, August 1919. >> Yep. >> Um Iraq led by Saddam >> M >> decides to invade Kuwait. >> Mhm. >> At that time, you were uh in the CIA. Uh

[02:38] you were working in Langley as an analyst. >> Yes. and uh just a a couple of a year before that you were you were hired by the CIA around the year before that. So >> um and you were given Saddam to focus on um and you were you were focused on leadership psychology. So let's talk about this context. What were you focused on? Were what did you find about Saddam before the invasion happened? >> Right. So I was hired by the CIA. They made me an offer in uh December of 1989.

[03:11] I gladly took it. So that first week of January, I started working at the CIA and I was made an analyst in something called the Office of Leadership Analysis. >> Yeah. So I'm just going to do this for you. >> Sure. >> So I just was going to fix this for you, but sorry. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. So I was made an analyst in the office of leadership analysis which was the psychology, anthropology, sociology, the PhDs uh would do long-distance psychological

[03:42] evaluations of world leaders. I'm I'm smiling because I was given Iraq >> to be my the country that I covered. And I said, "Iraq, huh?" And my new boss said, "I know." He said, "Don't be disappointed. Nothing ever happens there. It's the same cabinet since the 1968 revolution. >> So they're give they're given this because you're a beginner. >> Because I'm a beginner. And he told me these were his exact words. He said,

[04:13] "Work hard, learn the writing style, and in a year you can transfer to something interesting like Romania." >> Romania was interesting at the time. >> Well, they had just overthrown Chashescu like the week before. [laughter] >> Okay. So I said, "Okay, all right. This is going to be boring, but that's okay." And then they said, "Why don't you learn about Kuwait, too, because we have good relations with Kuwait. Our officials meet with the Kuwaitis. That'll give you something to

[04:44] keep your your day full." I said, "Okay." Iraq was so slow for me. There were some days where we didn't get a single report from anybody. CIA, NSA, State Department, Defense Department, press, nothing. >> I would just kind of sit there like this >> for a whole day. >> For a whole day, waiting for somebody, usually a Friday, waiting for somebody to send something in. Anything. Nothing.

[05:15] Kuwait was far more interesting because there was the the conversation at the time about the majus and bringing the majus back and it was just a very interesting period in Kuwaiti politics and then I got to know Kuwaitis in Washington mostly at the Kuwaiti embassy. Ambassador Sa Naser was just a lovely lovely man very generous with his time. We had very good close relationship with him. So part of your work you had to um >> Yeah. I was not undercover. I was an

[05:46] overt CI CIA employee. So I would go and say, "Hello, Mr. Ambassador. I'm John Kiryaku from the CIA." >> Okay. >> Yeah. So he he knew me. I would we would go to all the same events. He knew me as that kid from the CIA. We weren't, you know, close or anything. He was far too important and too senior. So, um, in June of 1990, one of the political analysts said in

[06:19] one of our regular meetings, we would meet every day at 9:00 just to talk about what was going on in the region, what happened overnight, any interesting news, who died, you know, who was fired from what cabinet, that kind of thing. and he said, "I'm seeing some odd military movements in Iraq. That's not something I covered. It was not something I paid attention to." So, and I'm new at the time. I've only been there for 6 months. So, I was happy to

[06:51] listen to what he had to say. And I remember my boss saying, "What kind of military movements are you talking about?" And he said, "Saddam is not just pulling troops out of Kurdistan to send them south toward the border, but we're seeing movements among the Republican Guard, which make me think that something's up." It was another couple of weeks before the Iraqis began to make accusations against Kuwait related to oil.

[07:23] And so on June 30th, we published our very first paper for the White House and the Pentagon saying something's happening in Iraq. We're not exactly sure what it is, but it looks at this early stage like they're trying to frighten the Kuwaitis. >> That was June. We watched it very, very closely through the month of July. And then we reached out to the Kuis and we said, "We don't know if you're picking this up, but we are and we think that

[07:55] the Iraqis are a threat to you." And the Kuwaiti government came back and said, "No, we're seeing the same thing. We think the Iraqis are a threat as well." So, we agreed to continue sharing information and um in July, we're talking to the Kuis. The Kuwaitis are talking to us. We're telling them, "Be careful. there's there's a problem in the north. And then at the CIA, we

[08:26] we disagreed a lot amongst ourselves about whether the Iraqis were going to invade. If they did invade, were they just going to take the Romela oil field >> or were they going to try to take the whole country, >> the disputed area, >> right? [snorts] almost none of us believed in July of 1990 that they would take the whole country. It didn't make any sense. And then that July, I was um I was part of a CIA

[08:58] sports league. Everything at the CIA they want you to do with other CIA people. >> You want to sing songs, they have a CIA choir. >> Why? >> Because everybody has security clearance and you can talk about classified information and not get in trouble. So, I was playing softball. I was on the CIA softball team. And one of the old men came up, old men. He was probably 40. In my mind, he was an old man. So, one of the old men came up to me and said, "Hey, wanted to talk to you." I

[09:28] said, "Sure." He said, "Uh, so Iraq and Kuwait, huh?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I think you don't understand how important this is." I said, 'How do you figure?' >> He said, 'It's not unusual for the countries we cover to go to war. It's very unusual for the countries we cover to go to war with us. This is going to be ugly. That was the very first time that I thought

[09:59] we're going to go to war. It hadn't occurred to me that we were going to go to war. >> I thought it was just going to be something between Iraq and Kuwait. It'll be a little border scuffle and and you know they're going to have talks in Riad or something and it's going to go away. But the Iraqis kept moving south. Finally, we were arguing amongst ourselves, the analysts, about whether this was going to be an actual invasion or if it was going to be an incursion

[10:30] where they just they cross the border a little bit and then they pull back. So I said, "Guys, why don't we just call the defense attaches in Baghdad? >> We'll ask him to drive down to the Kuwaiti border this weekend and just call us and tell us what he sees." They said, "Nah, that's a great that's a great idea." >> Okay. >> So I called him and I said, "Conel, we're we're arguing over here in Washington. We don't really we don't really know what to expect. can you

[11:01] drive down to the Kuwaiti border and then just tell us what you happen to see on the way down. So he does that over the weekend. He he did it on a Thursday and he called us Thursday night. It was late his time, Baghdad time. We were still at the office and when he called he said literally the entire Iraqi military is heading south. >> Wow. >> The whole military. It's going to be an invasion. >> Invasion.

[11:31] >> Invasion. They're going to take the whole the whole country. >> Well, that was on a Thursday. What date? Do you remember? >> It was on a Thursday. It was It was about a week before the invasion. Okay. >> The invasion was >> the 2nd of August. >> Yeah, it was a second, but I don't remember what day it was. Was it a Tuesday? >> It was on a Thursday. >> A Thursday. Okay. So, it was a week before. >> Okay. So, so we we wrote a paper for the president and um and it was in the president's

[12:02] daily brief. It went to the president and the vice president, the national security adviser, secretary of state and the deputy secretary of state, secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense and the chairman and joint and vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. So all the people that needed to see it saw it that it is the view of every analyst at the CIA who works on either Iraq or Kuwait or oil that the Iraqis are going to cross the border and take the whole country. So we we told the Kuwaitis what our what

[12:35] our analysis was. Now on the on the one hand we were fortunate in that it was August and so so many kuises were outside the country. They were on holiday. They're in the states or in the UK or Lebanon or Cyprus or wherever vacations with their family. So a lot of people were out but a lot of people weren't out and most of the ruling family was was in Kuwait. >> Yeah. >> So

[13:06] So you told Yeah. We told the Kuwaitis who are the Kuwaitis that who do you usually communicate to? >> We would do it two ways. We would do it through the Kuwaiti embassy which which would have been Ambassador Salaser Sabah and then in Kuwait the ambassador would have gone to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defense. >> Okay. And as I said, our relationship with the Kuwaiti government was was very close at the time. Even though Koi was a member of the non-aligned movement, the NAM, we

[13:37] still had good relations, especially as it related to things like odd things like uh human rights or labor affairs, things like that. We were very close with the Kuwaiti government. >> So you had a close relationship with with the Kuwaitis and they were part of the non-allied movement. >> Yeah. >> Um and that was a week before. Well, >> yeah. >> So what happened after? You know, I I should add as background, remember I was given this job as a training job, a training account is what

[14:09] they called it, so that I could go on to something more important like Romania. And so for those of us junior analysts who who couldn't get published because there was nothing happening either in Iraq or Kuwait for the you know the year before the uh invasion at least. Um we had an in-house magazine that we would publish. We would write articles for the magazine and the magazine would just go to all the analysts. >> So at least you could say I got

[14:40] published in it was called the leadership review. So I needed to get published if I had any hope of being promoted. And um and so I said, you know, there's this Kuwaiti who's very interesting to me. His name is Dr. Ahmed Katib. >> He has such an interesting background. So I wrote a one-page like a little biographical, you know, this is he went to university in in Beirut and he was living with Gor

[15:13] Habash and they created the PFLP together and he's a medical doctor and he came back and he's you know >> communist and whatever. He was just an interesting character. And so on August 1st, my boss told everybody, "Get a good night's sleep because tomorrow's going to be a very long day." >> August 1st. >> Yeah. >> Why is that?

[15:45] >> You could not squeeze one more Iraqi soldier onto the border. >> Oh, so it was inevitable. >> Oh, yeah. >> It wasn't a surprise attack. >> No, the timing was a surprise. You know, there were still there were still people everywhere at the CIA, at the White House, at the State Department, in the Kuwaiti government who thought this was a bluff. He's he's going to demand some kind of concession. He's going to try to be he's going to try to look like a strong man.

[16:15] He's going to bully the Kuwaitis and then he's going to take his spoils and go back to Baghdad >> as as CIA. And and that's really where there is a a theory that comes in and they say the CIA and the Americans knew what was happening and they didn't do anything to stop it. >> It's not true. That's not true at all. No, even as a junior analyst, I could see what was happening. There were analytic disagreements over what this meant, and we had to hash out those

[16:47] disagreements in the 6 or 8 weeks before the invasion actually took place. The real drama was at the State Department. >> Oh, >> well, because the State Department disagreed with us. It's not uncommon to have bureaucratic disagreements between CIA, State, and DoD, the Department of Defense. Not unusual at all. Happens every single day. And usually what will happen is when you're writing something for the president, if the State Department

[17:18] disagrees, they'll put what's called a disscent box at the bottom of the paper saying the State Department disagrees with this analysis. Our analysis is this. >> So the president can say, "Okay, the CIA says this, the Defense Department is agreeing with it. DIA, NSA are agreeing with it, but the State Department disagrees with it." and they have a pretty good argument at the bottom. Well, the State Department believed that this was this was tough guy diplomacy

[17:49] that Saddam was just trying to bully the Kuwaiti government. And so, >> yeah, for context, we no one ever expected that to happen. It was a the relationship between Iraq and Kuwait and the Gulf countries >> and the Arab states, >> right, >> at the time, when you speak to anyone at the time, they would say no one would ever dare to think of something like that. No, because Iran was the enemy, not Iraq. It was supposed to be Iraq that was protecting the Gulf States against Iran from Iran. So,

[18:21] the American ambassador in Baghdad at the time was April Glasby. April lived with her mother. Her mother was in her 80s. They they lived together in the ambassador's house in uh in Baghdad. And April was supposed to go on vacation. I think it was on July the 30th or 31st. She and her mother were coming home for like six weeks. Our embassy in Baghdad was very very small. It only had about four people in it. >> The ambassador, the deputy ambassador, the defense ate and a consular officer.

[18:52] That's it. >> But the country being very important in the Middle East, you just had four. >> But nothing ever happened there. >> Okay. >> We didn't have any national interests there, >> you know. So Iraq was not an enemy at the time. >> No, it was kind of a nutty country and he was a crazy person leading it, but it it didn't impact us in any way. Plus, he was holding the Iranians back, which is what we really wanted. So, April wrote to Secretary James Baker,

[19:25] Secretary of State, and said, uh, we have to address this directly with Saddam Hussein. we have to meet with him and tell him what the American position is. Now, here's where the disconnect was, and this is where this this was the birth of the conspiracy theories. Secretary Baker sent her a cable called a notice cable, which stands for no dissemination, which means it goes directly from the Secretary of State to

[19:56] the ambassador. The only other organization that gets a copy is the CIA. But a no dis a no disk cable is so sensitive that that the cable can only be printed in the CIA operations center. >> So if you're an analyst like I was, you can go up to the operations center on the seventh floor. You can read it. You can take notes on it, but you can't quote it and you can't copy it. That

[20:28] that's how sensitive it is. So, Secretary Baker sends a notice cable to to April Glasby and he says he said a lot of things, but the most important thing that he said was to tell Saddam that the United States government does not take a position on ArabA border disputes. Now, that was the nature of the disagreement. Because at the CIA, we said, "This isn't a border dispute. It's going to be an invasion." >> And the State Department said, "We disagree with your analysis. We think

[21:00] this is just about the Romela oil field." And so he told her to tell Saddam, "This is between you and the Kuwaitis. We don't take a position on border disputes." >> If you were if you were planning to invade, how would you think of the point that >> that was the green light? If I were Saddam Hussein, I would have told Isat Ibrahim or Tarak Aziz or whomever the Americans just gave me the green light and in fact we didn't. Do you think he might have had an idea that he just wanted to go to Rome, but when he got

[21:32] this message, he said, "Oh, this is a chance for us to invade the whole country now." >> That's possible. Although it wouldn't account for the large scale military movements, but yeah, that's possible. Sure. >> Yeah. So there were at least a dozen of us, 10 or 12 of us analysts waiting, waiting, waiting in the operation center just standing there waiting for her meeting with Saddam to end so she could drive back to the embassy and then write a no dis cable back to the Secretary of

[22:04] State so we could see what did Saddam say when she gave these talking points. >> What did he say? He didn't say anything. And she said she had only met with him three times in all the the years that she was ambassador there. And she said that that was a normal meeting with Saddam. He would just kind of sit there and stare at you and not respond. He'll listen to your talking points and then he gets up. He also, she said, he had this odd power trip habit that when you went to shake

[22:35] his hand, he would hold his hand like this. >> Yes. So that you had to reach out with your hand causing you to bow a little bit. >> He liked that. >> You worked on his psychology a lot. >> I did. >> So what can you tell us about his psychology? >> Our bottom line psychological analysis was that he was a sociopath. He was unable to feel emotion, empathy, regret, remorse. He killed like a like a

[23:07] criminal syndicate boss kills. It's just business, nothing personal. Maybe he's going to have a party for you or maybe he's going to execute you. You don't know when you get the uh the call that Saddam wants to see you. Um >> they killed his daughter's uh husband. >> Both of them. Hussein Camel and Saddam Camel murdered them both. His son his son Odessed was a psychopath. >> OD. >> Yeah. a dangerous crazy

[23:40] >> bloodthirsty murderer was a sociopath like his father but he wasn't crazy and then you had Barzaniti Sabawi um and what was the uh the other brother the third brother Sabawi Barzan and I forget the other one >> Ali Kimawi as well >> Ali uh Ali Hassan Al Majid was was like u insane. >> Yeah. >> The butcher of Kurdistan. Chemical Ali.

[24:13] >> Yeah. >> Yeah. These are welldeserved nicknames. >> So, so, so when she do you think she might have April and we were being very objective just like any human being >> when you go to someone and that person is silent. >> Mhm. >> And you start saying more things that you than you're supposed to say. How do you think April >> Yeah. >> before she told Saddam, how do you think April understood the message? Um because obviously she communicated the message. How do you think she understood it that

[24:45] even if Saddam invades >> that was the mistake that she made? She was a seasoned diplomat. She was a an ambassador at least three times. Baker was not. Baker was Secretary of State. April knew more about diplomacy than Baker did. And April should have told Baker, "These talking points are unacceptable." Not when the CIA is writing every day that Iraq is going to invade Kuwait. These talking points are not acceptable. But she never said that. >> That's where the conspiracy theory comes

[25:16] from uh in terms of there were people who wanted Saddam to invade. >> We had zero national interest in Saddam invading Kuwait. What about the oil and then but or having um having American troops in the in the Middle East? There was things that came. >> But if if Iran is a threat, there are always going to be troops in the in the Middle East. They didn't have to specifically be in in Kuwait. And we sit on an ocean of oil in the United States. And we were friendly with Venezuela at the time. They have the largest oil

[25:47] reserves in the world. >> So, it wasn't the thing. >> It wasn't about oil. I remember getting into an argument with a guy in the embassy here right after the liberation. He was furious that that we had liberated Kuwait. He said, "We should have just let them fight their own battles." I said, "Are you crazy? You know how big Iraq is? You know how many troops Iraq has?" And he said, "If this country had gravel instead of oil, would we have done this?" And I said, "It doesn't matter. If the Kuwaitis asked us to help them,

[26:21] why wouldn't we help them? I mean, oil or no oil, it becomes a human rights issue. The Iraqis were committing atrocities against Kuwaiti civilians, so we're we're honorbound to help them. Do you think everyone holds this position in uh like I respect your your view and position really? And I think that's very that's that's something that I believe in too. Human rights comes before everything else. >> Yeah. >> But do you think that's what politics is about? I think politics is about greed

[26:51] and land. >> I I think I'm probably in the minority. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Especially post 911. I'm definitely in the minority post 911. >> Let me finish. What uh the reason why I brought Ahmed Kib up. The day the day after the invasion, the morning of the invasion, the Iraqis announced that Ahmed Khib would be the governor of occupied Kuwait, but they had never said anything to Ahmed Kib. So, we get this report flash from the Associated Press, Ahmed Katib, named new

[27:24] leader of Kuwait. >> And then Katib is like, "What? No, I'm not." And then he pledged his loyalty to the uh to the government of Kuwait and to the ruling family. But before he did that, I walked into the office early on August the boss said, "Uh, don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House." I had never been to the White House before. I had been as a tourist where you just go through a few rooms.

[27:57] So, we drove to the White House and there was a Marine waiting for us and he led us into the Oval Office. >> 2nd of August. >> 2nd of August. I was 25 years old. And I'm standing in the Oval Office with the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, the CIA director, my boss, and me. So, we go in. I was a nervous wreck. And I remember very clearly my first thought. I was standing there just

[28:27] looking around and I'm looking at the president and I thought my friends would not believe me in a thousand years if I told them where I was right now. I I couldn't believe it myself. So I'm standing there. The president was very upset, very preoccupied. He had he was on the phone with Ambassador Saw Nasa when when we walked in. >> George Bush. >> George HW Bush. That's right. And so we're standing there and he says, "Gentlemen, please sit down. sit down. He was George HW Bush was one of the

[28:59] most beloved presidents of my lifetime. >> Well, you're you're a lefty a little bit. >> And I'm a lefty and he was not a lefty. >> Um but he had been the CIA director for 11 months and it was he in his words it was the greatest job he ever had in his life. Better than being president. And so when I was still there, when his son was president, he would come to CIA CIA headquarters. And he would just walk up and down the halls. >> He just likes it there.

[29:29] >> And people would say, "Hey, President Bush is in the hall." And we would go out and just start clapping. And then he would come over and shake hands. How's everybody? Keep up the good work. >> That's the kind of person he was. So anyway, I had never met him at that point. That was the first time I met him. So we walked in and he says, "Gentlemen, please sit down. Sit down." So he and the vice president were sitting in these two very nice oversted chairs and then the CIA director and the national security adviser were sitting in two like normal less comfortable

[30:00] chairs and then my boss and I sat on the couch. So we all sit down and then the president says, "Well, now what do we do?" And then everybody turns and looks at me and I'm looking at them and it took me a second and I said, "Oh, well, [clears throat] Mr. President, as you know, Iraqi troops crossed the border at whatever it was, 2:00 in the morning. They took the whole of Kuwait. The ruling family fled to um

[30:31] Saudi Arabia. They're with the Saudis now. U blah blah blah blah blah." and he says, ' Do we know anything about who's in charge in Kuwait now? And this is why I brought up Dr. Katib. And I said, 'Yes, actually, we know a lot about him. His name is Dr. Ahmed Katib, and uh he was educated at the at the American University of Beirut. He earned a degree in medicine, but his college roommate was George Habash. And together they founded the Popular Front for the

[31:01] Liberation of Palestine. And the vice president says, "Jesus Christ." [laughter] >> That was before he denied. But >> that was before it was just a matter of a couple of hours when the Iraqis said it and he denied it. And the meeting was right in the middle of those couple of hours. >> So Bush says, "Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you. I don't need anything else." >> So we all stood up and we walked out. Later that afternoon, something happened

[31:33] that has become famous. At 3:00 that afternoon, Margaret Thatcher called him. She was the prime minister of the UK, the Iron Lady, right? And she said something that has become famous. She said, "George, now's not the time to go wobbly." >> She knew how important >> she knew just how important this was, that we had to move troops there and we had to destroy Saddam Hussein. She's the one who said it because he was like, "Oh my god, what do I do? I'm not sure what

[32:04] to do. I'm not sure where the Navy is and we're too far away." There was another problem I remember as a junior analyst. Satellites were very difficult to move and we didn't have any satellites over Kuwait. Why would we? >> So satellites is for you to understand what's happening on the ground. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> We didn't have any satellites looking at Kuwait because we were friends with Kuwait. So, we had to move one of our satellites from the Soviet Union. >> No way. >> Uhhuh. This is why it took until February

[32:35] >> to invade >> to invade to to counterattack. Yes. Because >> that that satellite had to move in slow motion from over Moscow to over Kuwait. And once it was in place, then we were like, "Okay, now we can do it." >> So, it takes that much time to >> It did back then. Now you just go to Google Earth and just look, you know, one day old uh photographs, but it was a different world back then. Yeah. And I remember I remember Bush

[33:05] calling Gorbachov. It was the day before we attacked and he said, "I know that you're watching our military movements on satellite. I know that you're friendly with Saddam Hussein. I'm asking you as a friend not to tell the Iraqis what we're doing. And Gorbachev never said a word. >> But between the August and between uh >> February >> February, there was a meeting with Gorbachov where the Soviet Union decided to dismantle it. >> That's right. >> And that was crucial. Right.

[33:35] >> Gorbachov had his own problems. Yes. That was crucial. the the the Soviets might have taken a different position because they had longstanding close relations with the Iraqis and there was a lot of oil going back and forth. The the Russian oil industry was not really fully exploited like it is today, right? They made some oil, they produced some oil, but it was no big deal really. So

[34:06] because the Soviet Union was falling apart at exactly the same time that that this this invasion was taking place, Gorbachev had his own issues. He was afraid that he would be overthrown. In fact, Bush and Gorbachev got along very well. And we picked up intelligence once that there was a coup being plotted. And so Bush called him and warned him >> against him. >> Oh. And that's how he was able to fend off these Soviet generals. >> So we Gorbachov was being contained very

[34:36] well. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So back to that after after the meeting, you go back to the office. >> Yeah. Everybody wanted to know what was it like? What did he say? >> Was a huge panic in Kuwait obviously and >> Oh my god. Yes. And I said, "Guys, we're going to war. It's clear. We're going to war." >> I remember going home that night and my wife said, "What was it like?" And I said, "It's unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life." Even later on, just to give you an idea.

[35:08] In February, Ambassador Skip Ganim, he was the American ambassador, he loved Kuwait as much as he loved the United States. And he said once, this has stuck in my mind all these 35 years. He said, "I have a problem that's unique among American ambassadors anywhere in the world. I can't get people to stop writing pro-American graffiti on the side of the embassy >> because there Kuwaitis were coming up and and writing like long live Bush. [laughter]

[35:40] >> Yeah. >> There was a shaad. >> Yeah. >> Uh over by where where was it? Salamia or >> Yeah. There. And in the middle of the night during the occupation, people would go and paint over the word Baghdad in blue and then they would write bush on top of it. So it was Shah Bush. >> And then I remember in ' 91 there was like this entire generation of babies that were born and they were named

[36:11] George. >> There were even George Bush came to the >> Oh, came to the parliament. >> Oh my gosh. that trip. I prepared him for that trip and I briefed him. That was the second time I met him. So he was actually there's a little story there if you don't mind me jumping ahead a little bit. >> Sure. Sure. >> So he he wanted to come to Kuwait to his words to take a victory lap. >> Yeah. >> Right. High five everybody. We've liberated the country. We love

[36:41] you. You love us. You know that kind of thing. just have dinners and shake hands and take pictures and everybody's happy. And then we got word that uh there was going to be an assassination attempt. >> So So when I say you got word, how do you mean what do you mean you got word? >> People make stupid mistakes. Okay. >> And so actually it was the Kuwaitis that picked it up. We I mean we don't have we're friends so we don't have reason to be listening to Kuwaiti telephone calls.

[37:13] And the Kuwaiti said that there were these Iraqi agents that both came from Iraq into Kuwait or were from among the Bedun and they were planning this um assassination attempt and they arrested a whole bunch of people, 20some people. And then a couple of um a couple of months later, I'm sitting in the morning meeting, the 9:00 meeting that I told you about, and the secretary came in and she said, "Uh, John, General Powell's on

[37:44] the phone for you." And I said, "For me? How does General Powell knew know who I am?" Colin Powell at the time was the uh chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And she said, "I don't know, but he asked for you personally." And my boss said, "Well, go answer the phone." So I went to my desk and I said, ' Good morning, General Pal. May I help you? And he says very quickly, he says,"John, if the Iraqis were going to assassinate the president, who would be in charge of actually carrying out an operation like that?" And I said, 'Well,

[38:15] if you're talking about the aborted attempt in Kuwait, um Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi intelligence service, Basra Station, but Basra station in turn is managed by by um uh Saber Abdulazizuri, his name was he's the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. And Powell says, "Where does he physically sit?" And I said, "In IIS headquarters in Baghdad." And he says, "Thank you." and he hangs up the phone.

[38:46] So I go back into the office and everybody was sitting there. What did he want? I said he wanted to know where the director of the Iraqi intelligence services office was. Said, "Okay." 8 hours later, we fired 47 cruise missiles into the Iraqi intelligence service headquarters and we turned it into dust. Mhm. They didn't want to fool around with these Iraqis. These Iraqi government officials, these were very

[39:17] bad people. >> Yeah, >> very bad people. Just as happy to kill you as to smile and shake your hand. >> 100%. >> One other thing, um, I gave a briefing to the CIA's deputy director for operations. He was he was just intrigued and appalled by a press report that came out about a new law that Saddam had signed that morning. And the law said that if you criticize Saddam,

[39:47] they're going to cut out your tongue and nail it to the front door of your house >> by law. >> Yeah. By law. Like in in the official register of the the government register. So I I had I was called to go up and brief him and he said, "Tell me that this is not true." And I said, "It's it's true. They haven't done it." And he said, "Oh my god, the president called me." He said, and he said, "Did you hear Saddam is nailing people's tongues to their front doors? Like we have to take

[40:18] this guy out." >> Yeah. >> And I said, "No, it hasn't happened. It's a threat. It's on the official, you know, on the books as an official law. It's in the the the National Register, but he hasn't actually done it yet. And he said, "Good, good. I just don't want to attack anybody today." >> Such an Arab thing to do though in terms of you don't really have Arab culture, you have Greek culture. There are some stuff that the Greek culture speaks about. >> But for you to turn it into a law, >> right? Right. >> Like everyone, every culture has these

[40:49] things that they talk about. I'll we have a good this I'll cut your >> I'll cut your tongue. It's a thing in in Arabic culture. Right. I worked with a CIA officer here right after the liberation. He got into a road rage incident with a Kuwaiti and what he did was he lifted up his leg, opened his window and he was driving with his foot out of the window to show offense to the And then the Kuwaiti guy did the same thing and then they pulled over to fight and they got out of the cars and they

[41:20] were like, "What are we doing? This is so stupid." And then they ended up they ended up going out and having a I don't know a juice, a drink or something. >> Let's go back to the second of August. You just left the White House. Uh president told you this is all I need for now. Thank you, gentlemen. You left. Now what? What do you do? >> Yeah. So the CIA at the at the first sign of of trouble of a major international event, they set up 24-hour

[41:53] task force, right? So everybody has to be scheduled on the task force because I was the expert on on Iraq from the psychology uh standpoint. I was one of the first to go on the task force. So I did that for about six weeks. So, you do like four 12-hour days and then you're off three. And then four 12-h hour days, but the midnight shift and then you're off three. And you just cycle through like that. And we were

[42:24] writing something called a spotcom. What's that stand for? A spot commentary where it's like up to the minute, this is the intelligence that's coming in. So, you get a cable saying the Iraqis did this. And so you say this is what the Iraqis did. This was it is what it means. And you fax it to the White House. >> So where do you get all of this information? >> It's coming from CIA officers all around the world, from State Department officers reporting through State Department embassy channels all around

[42:55] the world, from NSA, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, from the Pentagon, even from ships at sea. If they're picking up something that the Iraqis are doing, they report it. And then of course uh press and media from from all around the region. >> Was there CIA on the ground in Kuwait? >> Uh no. >> No. >> Nothing. >> No. It was very very different from what the beginning of the Afghan war was years later.

[43:26] >> Years later, CIA teams are parachuting in, buying horses from tribesmen, and then just riding the horses to Kbble to overthrow the Taliban. in Kuwait. It was I mean there was nobody. Everybody was on vacation. >> Oh, so you didn't so the CIA never sent anyone into Kuwait before? >> No. That would have been so dangerous that it wouldn't have been worth whatever information they could have they could have gained. Now, the Kuwaitis who had been left behind or who

[43:59] had stayed behind had formed into these resistance units. Yeah. And they were so smart with the way they did it. They knew that we were listening to everything, that NSA was listening to everything. And so if the Kuwaiti resistance needed to pass a message to the Pentagon or to the CIA, they would just call somebody and just say it knowing that NSA is going to intercept the call

[44:31] >> and then send the transcript to the CIA and to the Pentagon. So it was very effective. >> Was there someone in particular that you remember? >> There was a woman Gabandi. >> That's right. Asal Gabandi. She was a bonafide hero. Um, she was a hero to the point where she was the one, I think, who best understood how to use her phone

[45:03] >> because we were getting her reporting literally every single day. Every single day. And she's talking about Iraqi troop movements and where the roadblocks are and where the inspections are. She was talking about Iraqi atrocities because the Iraqis as soon as they arrived, they started raping and killing and pillaging and stealing. They were monsters. And I remember one Kuwaiti telling me months later that um

[45:33] that he hated all Iraqis. And it surprised me when he said it. And I said, "Really? All Iraqis? like just the average Iraqi soldier. And he said, "Saddam Hussein didn't rape my sister. An Iraqi soldier raped my sister. Saddam Hussein didn't kill my uncle. An Iraqi soldier killed my uncle." And I said, "I I get it. I hadn't thought of it that way." But he was right. It wasn't just, "Oh, these poor Iraqi soldiers, they don't want to be here. They're the

[46:03] brothers of the Kuwaitis." It was nothing like that. They were monsters. and they committed terrible crimes here. In fact, I'm told now that it no longer exists, but um immediately upon the liberation, the Kuwaiti government opened um what they called uh the torture museum. I I have many pictures from this museum. It was in it was in a private home. But when Kuwait was liberated, um the

[46:34] Kuwaitis and the Americans both found dozens of buildings where the Iraqis were committing torture and they they would do things like they would take the cushion off a chair and so you know, normally you would just fall right through it if there's no cushion, but instead they opened up a toaster and put the coils across the toaster. So you're sitting on the coils and then they plug it in and they just burn your flesh just right through.

[47:05] Um the government also set up uh the Kuwaiti government also set up um using mannequins. They they showed the condition of of the bodies of Kuwait resistance fighters who had been tortured and killed. And then some of the the equipment that the Iraqis used to just defile people and murder them and torture them and do horrible things, cut their fingers off a piece at a time. And it was unspeakable.

[47:38] >> It was the peak of torture uh during those times. >> It was incredible. the the level of cruelty was something that none of us had ever seen before anywhere. >> Yeah, that's the thing. It was that if he built Saddam built a lot of inhumane systems into the uh the army that these things just became normal to them and he was like systematic the way he trained or the bath regime. That's right. to be

[48:08] able to come up with all these different types of See, he would he wouldn't tell them do this and that. He would just build the environment around them >> and make them think in a specific way >> and then they would just come up with all of these creative but very ugly ways of torture. >> You know, one of our secretaries said to me one time, "I don't know why you're so surprised that he's doing these kinds of things. He did this during the Iran Iraq war." And I said, "What did he do?" And she said, 'D did you know that he electrified the marshes in the south to

[48:39] electrocute the Shia fishermen? I said, "Come on." Yeah, how do you electrify a marsh? That's not even possible. >> And then she went and found the original report. It was a defense department report from 1986. And she said, "Look." And she showed it to me and I said, "My god, I never even heard of this." Electrocuting hundreds of people at a time. But yeah, he stopped at nothing. >> Ali Hassan Majid was, you know, not just dropping

[49:11] chemical weapons on on Kurds. Uh he was engaged in the wholesale slaughter of both Kurds in the north and Shia in the south and then the Kuwaitis when he was, you know, minister of whatever it was he was minister of. >> Yeah. He came to Kuwait while he was in Kuwait during >> he was the actually he was the governor of occupied Kuwait. He was the the butcher of Kuwait. >> Yeah. So, um you were getting all these reports from Kuwait telling you what's happening and then there you said it was a spot up. Did you call it

[49:42] >> spotcom? Spot. >> Spot commentary. >> Yeah. >> So, we would do these like every 4 hours. And let me give you an example of of the kind of um workload. So, on a normal day, I I told you before the invasion, I would go a whole day and some days receive no cables at all. like this, we're getting 10,000 cables a day. 10,000 cables a day. And so, not only do you have to go

[50:13] through them, I became that that was the first time I became a regular briefer. The director of the CIA at the time was Judge William Webster, who was a a lovely man. He had been a federal judge and then the director of the FBI and then the director of the CIA. and he was just a very kind, nice man. So the shift leader said, "Have you ever briefed the director again?" I said, "I've never even seen the director." He was like a giant in my mind. He said,

[50:44] "Well, you're going to brief the director in 15 minutes, so be prepared." So he came in and I said, "Uh, I said,"Good morning, Mr. Director." It was like 4:00 in the morning. and he said, "What's happening in Kuwait?" So, I started the briefing and um and he knew all the issues. He was going to the White House in two hours to, you know, brief the president and everybody just kind of worked

[51:14] hand and glove just together with each other and then with the Kuwaiti government. So, I did the six weeks on on this task force. you can't keep up that workload for much more than 6 weeks. And then my boss said, "Uh, listen, you're going to fly to Taif. We're going to have you on the ground in Taif working with the Kuwaitis." >> This is where the ruling family were. >> The ruling family when they when they first fled on the on the 2nd of of August, they they made it out to Dahan and then for their own safety, they were

[51:46] they were then taken to Riyad. And then I don't know how the decision was made whether it was a Kuwaiti decision with the Saudis or the Saudis with the Americans or whatever but um they decided to put everybody in Tif which is a very nice place. There was a palace there where they could sort of have the government um reconstitute itself >> because Tif was where the Lebanese uh summit happened even a year before

[52:16] >> a year before. So everything was nice and new and there were hotels and it could accommodate. We're talking about a lot of people cuz the Americans are there, the British are there, the Saudis are there, the Kuwaitis are living there and there are people constantly in and out, military, intelligence, diplomats. >> It became like the place to go in Saudi Arabia. So I went and um and my my job was just to work with the Kuis, whatever the Kuetes needed just to

[52:46] to try to give it to them. But there was one incident in particular. I think about it a lot still even after all these years. You and I were talking yesterday before we started uh we started recording and I was telling you how much I I respected uh Sheikh Jabar Alhmed the Amir. He was he was a very kind and decent man and a leader who genuinely loved and cared for

[53:18] his people. It was something really to to respect. He was beside himself with grief that this had happened. And I sent a cable to headquarters. And so the the cable went to the CIA director. He took it to the president and the president said, "Let's invite him to Washington. Let's give him the red carpet treatment. We'll invite him to Washington and I'm going to tell him

[53:48] what a great job he's doing and how much his people need him." Shake Sad was the day-to-day leader, right? meeting 20 hours a day with everybody who needed to be met, strategizing, talking about military movements, and then at the same time trying to manage the Kuwaiti resistance that was on the ground inside the country. >> Yeah, Shad was a very military person, >> hands-on, a good leader, the the best

[54:19] leader that Kuwait had for that situation. really both of them together. It was an incredible team. So, uh, Shikh Jaba went to Washington with with a delegation. He was there for several days and the pictures that came out of those meetings were just all smiles. He completely turned around and he came back and then it was just complete focus on pushing the Iraqis out of Kuwait and

[54:51] taking the country back. Um so you you were in dive and you were going in and out of dive. Um and you were just there ne with the ruling family seeing what they want. >> Um there was in October which is the summit. >> Yes. >> Between when all the quaters got together. Do you remember that? >> Yes. Were you there? >> I was I was not inside. No. >> But were you were you >> I was in D at the time. >> D. Do you remember any do you remember

[55:22] what happened? >> Yeah, I remember she Salam. Shehikh Salam at the time to the best of my recollection was the minister of interior >> and he was supposed to be not supposed to be he was the person in charge of trying to manage the situation on the ground. The problem that the Kuwaiti resistance had at the time was that it didn't have weapons and so it was hard to smuggle in weapons to an occupied country. >> Yeah. >> Right. Especially one so small. It's not like, you know, like there are these giant unprotected borders. Even though

[55:55] it's desert we're talking about, it's still small enough that the Iraqis had a pretty good handle on who was trying to get in and who was trying to get out. >> But, um, Shik Salam worked hard. He came to Washington several times, um, in order to, you know, sort of make some side negotiations for for weapons. >> Yeah. Um, and what was the CIA's role in this juring? The CIA's role was to give the Kuwaitis anything they wanted.

[56:25] Anything. The goal was to kill as many Iraqis as could be killed to drive them out. In fact, I'll tell you a story. President Bush gave the Iraqis an ultimatum. They have to be out of Kuwait by this date, >> 15th of January. 15th of January, that's what it was. >> And um I was working with an analyst. He was our Afghanistan analyst. Nice

[56:55] guy, not very smart. And the Iraqis released a statement saying that Saddam had accepted the American proposal and he was going to begin withdrawing. Nobody believed that was going to happen. And this analyst said, "Oh my god, the Iraqis are going to withdraw. We may have peace." And I said, "We don't want peace. We want to destroy him." Why were you very

[57:26] angry? >> I came to love the Kuis. You know, I'm reading I'm reading these reports every day all day of wholesale slaughter, massacres, rapes, and the most horrible things that a human being can do to another human being. And I I just I felt, you know, Kuwaiti almost. >> Yeah. So, you were angry with them as much as we were. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, then um

[57:57] he said, "Oh my gosh." He told me later that was like a slap in his face. It never occurred to him that what we really wanted was war. I said, 'Of course we want war because he's just going to do this again. If he just drives away and everybody just drives back to Iraq, what's going to stop him from doing it next year or the year after or the year after that? Look what he did with the Kurds. >> So there was no going back for him with the building. >> Absolutely not. He was going to have to he was going to have to be destroyed. Now, that gets into some complicated

[58:27] diplomacy because from the CIA side, we wanted to kill Saddam. That really was our goal. We wanted to kill. >> Could you have killed him? >> No, we could we couldn't quite get to him. Yeah. >> Was he difficult to get to? >> Very difficult. He was very It was like Osama bin Laden. He's sleeping in a different house every single night and half of the time he's underground and we never knew where he was. >> He had decoys. >> Mhm. Yeah. You know, people people used to tell these funny stories like, "Oh, you know, it's a body double." And people would laugh. No, they were body doubles. They were decoys. And it wasn't

[58:59] just Saddam. It was OD and too. Both of them had body doubles. One of them defected to the United States. And we met with him so he could tell us, you know, what UD was like and what his habits were. He was this a this sick psychopath. >> So you as a CIA wanted to take him out. Wanted to kill >> Oh, yeah. We wanted to kill him. >> Mhm. You know, I say I say in podcasts all the time, but in relation to the CIA's torture program that the CIA culture is such

[59:30] that they want us to believe that everything is a shade of gray, right? And I say that's just not true. Some things are black and white, right or wrong. >> Well, what the Iraqis did in Kuwait was wrong. There's no shade of gray there. It was just wrong. It was a crime against humanity, a war crime, and it needed to be dealt with as such. >> So, um, leading up to the 15th of January, um, Saddam was not going to do

[1:00:01] going to walk away from Kuwait. >> No. >> Um, what did the CIA start doing to prepare for Desert Storm? There was Desert Shield before. >> There was Desert Shield. >> Yeah. >> For one day, there was Desert Sword. So, so what is what is Desert Desert Shield then? >> Desert Shield was to protect Saudi Arabia because and most people don't remember this. When the Iraqis when the Iraqis took Kuwait, they moved they continued to move south into Saudi

[1:00:32] Arabia and the Saudis fought them back. So, Desert Shield was to keep the Iraqis contained in Kuwait so they couldn't spill over into Saudi Arabia. Um, Desert Sword was the day that the bombings began where Colin Powell said, "We're going to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age. You can't win a war." That was propaganda. Him saying that you can't win a war just with Arab power. >> But the idea was we were going to bomb them until they begged us to stop. And

[1:01:06] then Desert Storm was the actual move back into Kuwait. So, I mentioned earlier we had gone to the Russians. >> Yeah. >> And we asked Gorbachev, we said, "Look, we know you're watching everything. We know that you're friendly with the Iraqis. We're asking you, please don't tell the Iraqis what we're doing." And Gorbachev never said a word. So, what General Schwarzkov did, he was the commander of the Central Command. >> Have you met him? >> Yeah. What a bonafide hero he was. >> He's a legend in Kuwait. >> Is he really good? He was a wonderful man. A very sweet man.

[1:01:38] He's dead now, but um legendary. He was buried at West Point >> um in the uh in the general cemetery. >> So he was the guy the the main general >> the main commander >> of the coalition forces. >> The entire thing. >> How many? 500,000 uh soldiers. >> Troops. Yes. From different countries. >> Something like 36 countries. Yeah. It was crazy. >> Okay. So, what he did was was what he called a a a traditional flanking move that every

[1:02:11] 18-year-old West Point student learns >> where the Iraqis are here and we're in the south. The Iraqis think we're going to we're going to attack directly from the south. Instead, we're going to flank them. We're going to go 20 miles, what is that? 35 km to the west, then go north, and then hit them from the north. Coming south. So, they're all pointing south. We have some tanks there shooting at them, but the bulk of the army is

[1:02:42] coming at them from the north. >> It's like a sandwich. >> Yes. And we destroyed them. They on what was then called Kuwait's highway of death. >> Yeah. >> Right. I took some amazing pictures up there. It really was a highway of death. >> It became like a museum after. >> Yes, it did. >> It did. It was The Iraqis were running in chaos. >> Running back to Iraq. >> Yeah. But there was nowhere to go because we were coming at them from

[1:03:12] Iraq. They couldn't go west into the desert. The Saudis were waiting for them there. They couldn't go south. The battle of uh Why can't I remember the name? >> I know. I know which one. >> Kchi. >> Kchi. Thank you. The battle of Kafi and you know they tried to pull a a trick on us in Kafi. >> So they began approaching the American line of tanks with the turrets of the Iraqi tanks facing backward. That's a sign of surrender.

[1:03:45] >> And just as they got within firing range of the American tanks, the turrets swung around and they started shooting at us. >> But we knew they weren't going to give up. So we already had jets in the air. And so it wasn't just Iraqi tanks versus American tanks. It was Iraqi tanks versus American tanks and American fighter jets, including the the A-10 Warthog, which is they call it the tank killer. >> Was there no Iraqi jets? >> No. >> All destroyed. >> Oh, they had a handful. We had this uh

[1:04:17] we had this radar system in in our office in the CIA. I loved this thing. I could stand there and just stare at it for hours. So, it was live and it would show you the American jets and the Iraqi jets and then the Iraqi jets are trying to run away and then the American jets catch up with them and then the Iraqi jet it's not on the radar anymore >> because we blew it up. >> Yeah. >> And everybody would cheer. I remember listening to the recording >> of a Kuwaiti pilot. He was escorted by

[1:04:51] two American jets and the Kuwaiti pilot shot down the first Iraqi jet, >> the first one. And it was like this. I have chills thinking about it. It was talk about a cause for celebration. Like, okay, now we mean business. We're going to take every one of them out. By the end of the war, there was no such thing as the Iraqi Air Force. It just didn't exist. >> We had Muhammad Imbarak. >> Uhhuh. >> Big Mo, they called him. He's a pilot. He's a guy who was uh tried to hit one of the Iraqi targets and then he had to

[1:05:24] flee the he was hit. He had to flee the the plane and then he >> he parachuted himself into and they took him >> uh with other uh European pilots >> and then he was put on TV. Do you remember that? >> Yes, I do. I do. >> You know, it's funny. In the beginning of the conflict, we we just thought, my god, if you get caught by the Iraqis, you're done. But we had such overwhelming force that we got to the point where the Iraqis didn't dare harm any of these prisoners.

[1:05:55] >> Yeah. >> They might punch you a couple of times. >> Yeah. That's what that's what happened. >> Yeah. But but but see remember when he told me that they they came in a way. This is him. >> Mhm. >> That that's when he was on TV. See you see on the bottom images he that's when he was on the podcast with >> Yes. Fantastic. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think um >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. It's one of the best performing episodes with us. Anyway, um with with that said, what was I going to say? Yeah, if they if they didn't turn and try to um

[1:06:27] >> um to uh surrender. >> Yeah, if they didn't didn't try to surrender, um if they tried to surrender, would you have not hit them >> or would you were you going to hit them anyway? >> No, we we wouldn't if they had surrendered, we would have just taken them prisoner and we would have taken the tanks. we wouldn't have had to destroy them >> because the the theory out there is you've hit them anyway while they were surrendering and going back. Was that true? >> Our position was that it was too late to surrender. They had weeks to surrender.

[1:06:57] They knew what the deadline was. Once the deadline passed, there was no such thing as surrender. >> Yeah. They they they've put themselves in this situation. that you can't wait another month, another >> and I'll tell you one other thing that's burned in my memory is when the Iraqis began to run away up the highway of death. Yaser Arafat gave a statement and he kept saying over and over again, "Genius, genius. Saddam is genius."

[1:07:28] >> Why? He thought that there was some special secret plan that nobody knew about and he was luring the Americans away from Kuwait and it's like no not genius. >> 200,000 was killed. >> Exactly. >> 200,000 Iraqi soldiers. >> You know, this is another thing too. In 1990 when Kuwait was invaded, there were two members of the United Nations Security Council that were pro- Iraq, Cuba and Yemen.

[1:07:58] We went to the Cubans and the Yemenes and the Palestinians and we said, "You're going to have one chance to do the right thing. You have to be with Kuwait on this." And the Cubans said, "We're anti-imperialist. You're an imperialist. You're war mongers. We're voting." No. Okay. Well, we have an embargo in Cuba anyway. It doesn't make any difference. But the Yemenes wouldn't talk to us. So the Saudis went to the Yemenes. There were like

[1:08:30] 2 million Yemeni workers in Saudi Arabia at the time and the Saudis said, "You have to do the right thing. You can't vote for the Iraqis in the Security Council." And they voted for the Iraqis. And Yemen has never recovered because what the Saudis did was they expelled every Yemen worker. 2 million. Can you imagine? 2 million people being forced back into Yemen on the same day. I flew

[1:09:01] to Sana in June of 91. I was leaving Kuwait, so I had to make this side trip to Sana. And I was on a little propeller plane flying in and for 20 minutes before we landed, which is a long stretch of of land, >> Yeah. You could see Yemen families living in cardboard boxes, living in little tin, we call them

[1:09:32] leantos. And I remember thinking, how is this country going to recover? This country is going to be a failed state. >> Yeah. >> And and it is. And it's never recovered >> because of stupid decision. >> One stupid decision. And then there was another thing. I I went to I went to the um I went to the Diwania of Aikh with Ambassador Ganim. Um this would have been in like March or April of 1991.

[1:10:03] And he told us by the end of 1991 there will be no Palestinians in Kuwait. >> Yeah. >> And we went back to the embassy and the ambassador said, "I'm I'm panicked over this. this is going to be a disaster for a lot of innocent Palestinians. And I said, I know, but you can't blame the Kuwaitis after what just happened. And then Yaser Arafat crowing about what a genius Saddam Hussein was and that the Kuwaitis, they got what they deserved. They're not nice to us. You know,

[1:10:34] >> you know, Yaser Arafat's movement was born in Kuwait. >> Yes. Yes. >> So, it was very rich coming from an occupied country to stand against >> say that. And how is it possible for somebody who was supposed to be so brilliant and so worldly as Yasafhat to come to a stupid decision like that? >> I think it never occurred after that. >> Oh no, I agree. >> I think that was that was >> that was it. >> That didn't just affect him affected his cause. >> The whole movement. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. The whole movement. That's right.

[1:11:06] >> And you had brilliant before that we had brilliant Palestinians in Kuwait. Yes. >> You can't blame >> they ran the economy. >> Yeah. And he can't blame the Palestinians when someone says like I mean the the normal guy who is not into politics >> right >> when Saddam who just finished from the Iranian war and then he goes I'm going to come invade Kuwait and then I'm going to liberate >> Palestine. So you being a Palestinian again what they did many of them not all of them many of the Palestinians that were that were in Kuwait sided with the Iraqis >> that was wrong regardless of what's been

[1:11:38] told you told you but I understand their position but that doesn't mean that they were right >> I totally agree >> right >> so >> my analysis is the same >> yeah I mean they're humans at the end of the day when someone plays on their emotions and then we're going to liberate they made they made them do something wrong >> that's that So Yaser Alfat at the time and then the the Arab League was there was a crack in the Arab League. >> Boy, was there. >> Yeah. So Libya was it Libya? Correct me if I'm wrong. Right. Libya, Yemen.

[1:12:09] >> Jordan. >> Mhm. >> Jordan. Jordan. >> Jordan was in a weird position. >> Yeah. Jordan was did not vote with Kuwait in the Arab League because the Arab League vote was a very important one as well. the the Jordanians felt squeezed because they had so many Palestinians in Jordan. They were afraid of an uprising if they were to side with the Kuwaitis. >> Mhm. >> So yeah, and they had they had Palestine Syria. >> Yeah. Was it surprisingly because he wasn't

[1:12:39] >> well don't forget there was that big split in the bath parties from the 1960s and so so Hafas al-Assad saw this as his opportunity to ingratiate himself with the west. I actually went to Syria in 92 or 93 and I had to go through this series of briefings because Syria was what we called a denied area. There was no CIA presence. There was barely an American

[1:13:10] presence at all. We had a small embassy and um they said, "Look, you know, the Mabarat is going to follow you everywhere you go." Which they did, no problem. And um they said, "You're never going to see you're never going to meet a Syrian and you're never going to see the inside of a Syrian home." >> I said, "Okay, that's fine." So I flew from Aman to Damascus. I stayed at the Marriott Hotel in central Damascus.

[1:13:40] There was a Swedish woman who was married to a Syrian doctor and she gave tours of Damascus to visiting diplomats. So I hired her and she took me all around and showed me the sites. It was very nice. And then she said, "Is there anything you'd like to do?" I said, "Yeah, I'd like to go to the souk. I love suks all all across the Middle East." >> I said, "I'd like to go to the souk." And you know, everybody says the Damascus tablecloths are so beautiful and I want to buy a box and maybe a tawa

[1:14:10] set, you know, something like that. And she said, "Well, I I can't take you. You're going to have to go alone." I said, "That's fine." So I went alone and I went into the shop and this guy asks me I said and he just went. He had never met an American before. >> Yeah. >> Ever. >> Wow. >> And he asked me what I was doing in Syria and I said, "Oh, I'm just visiting

[1:14:41] for a few days. I've never been to Syria before. It's an incredible place. The food. Oh my god, the people are so nice. >> Yeah. >> I left his house at 2:00 in the morning. >> Oh wow. >> He invited me back. His wife made this fantastic dinner. They just wanted to know, you know, what is the world like? >> Yeah. >> I said, I had been in Kuwait. Oh my goodness. What was that like? You know, we fought alongside the Kuwaitis. I said, I know. And alongside the

[1:15:11] Americans, we were all brothers together. I said and um it was one of the most beautiful experiences I ever had in the CIA. Um even the mukabarat it was Ramadan I remember and so everything was closed until sunset and then up the marriott's downtown. You go up this hill and there were these huge outdoor restaurants. They were like tents >> and families just packed in. So I'm

[1:15:41] walking up the hill. Muhabarat is in a car. Two guys in a car and they're driving like 3 kilometers an hour next to me. So finally I said, "Guys, why don't you come and have dinner with me, please? I'll buy you dinner." >> Yeah. >> And we ended up sitting together and they were like, "You know, we have to report this." I said, "I know. I know. It's I It's no problem." >> But I had a wonderful experience in Syria. >> Um, have you heard of Maza prison? >> Mhm. Yeah. Hideous. >> Hideous, right? >> Hideous place. So far Madhan as Caesar

[1:16:13] >> when we interviewed him was a 4-hour interview. It's for the English listeners. It's also translated so you can actually watch it. >> Excellent. >> So the first hour and a half um he talks about his experience in serving at Maza. >> You know who was one of the prisoners? >> Uhoh. >> Salashid. >> Oh my. >> Yeah. And he used to be the nurse that visits him. So he told us a lot of very eyeopening stories about what has if you're interested in Syria and want to know how does a Syrian person live day

[1:16:45] today. They are not exposed to what is happening. >> They have no idea what's happening in the world. They're given propaganda. >> They are told how to where to walk to where what to do. So all of their life they've been super controlled. >> Yeah. So, um, they're they're good that they're liberated now, honestly, because they were living in a in a different world. >> Yeah, they really were. >> Yeah. And and and they were put very similar to what Iraq was. Every everyone was afraid because everyone hears

[1:17:17] different stories about torture and people just vanish. >> Working for the moukabar. >> Everyone was muabarat. Yeah. So, there were stories a a a parent would tell on his son and a son would tell on his dad. >> How terrible. Uh because they were because if both of us can be muhabarat and we wouldn't know we were muhabarat. >> Yes. >> And say does something. >> Yeah. >> If you report it and I don't I get in trouble as well. >> You know during the Vietnam War we had a similar situation in the United States where the government was so paranoid

[1:17:49] about anti-war activists threatening the government that the FBI infiltrated all the anti-war groups. And they got to the point in the early 1970s where there would be five or six people in one of these meetings and all of them were FBI agents and they're all reporting on each other. >> They just didn't know. >> No. >> Yeah. >> That's crazy. What a way to run a government. >> Exactly. See, uh, intelligence can be a slippery slope where you can become very paranoid. >> Absolutely true. Um, so going back to to

[1:18:20] Kuwait and speaking about Muhabarat and different countries, um, Saddam tried to hit Israel, right? He sent a few missiles. >> Yeah, that's that was one of the most exciting. I mean, if you're an outsider watching this happen, it it was very exciting. So in the American government there are several levels uh levels of immediacy in the cables. So a routine cable

[1:18:53] means ah read it or don't read it. Nobody cares. Maybe it says you know facil is coming on a visit in three weeks. Okay thank you. Nobody cares. >> Yeah. Priority means okay there's some diplomatic business here you know you should read this sometime today then after priority is um immediate that means this is important read it now >> then there's flash

[1:19:23] which means emergency and then there's the highest one is critic which means they're coming over the embassy walls God save Right. Most people could go through a 30-year career and never see a critic. We were getting multiple critics every day. >> Oh, wow. >> So NSA would say critic hostile m hostile missile launch and then it would have the geo coordinates.

[1:19:55] So, I had this huge map of Iraq over my desk and I would shout critic and everybody run over to my desk and I'd read the coordinates. If it was launched from Western Iraq, it was going to Israel. If it was launched from southern Iraq, it was going to either Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. And then we would turn on CNN and 15 minutes later they'd say, "Sirens are going off. There's a missile incoming to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem." Those Scud missiles that Saddam had were

[1:20:27] practically useless. They had no guidance systems. So, you just kind of aim it like, uh, I think Israel is that way and then they just shoot it and hope it hits something. >> You know, you can't win a war like that >> at all. >> Yeah. They also had something. >> Why was he doing it though? Why was he hitting Israel? >> There was nothing else he could do. I think he was trying to >> drop countries in. >> Convince the Arab countries that he's the right. >> He's liberating Jerusalem.

[1:20:58] >> He's the good guy. >> Uhhuh. That's right. He tried. He failed. Um, there's something else I wanted to say. When I first started working at the CIA and I was working on Iraq, as I said, nothing ever happened there. So I started following the story of of Gerald Bull who was a um a British inventor and he created something he invented something called the big gun. That's all it was called, the big gun. And what it

[1:21:29] was was just a gigantic barrel, like a gun that was so big that they had to lean it against the side of a mountain. >> Okay. >> Right. So maybe this thing is, you know, 100 meters. >> Yeah. >> The big gun. >> Gerald Bull. Big gun. >> Yeah. >> He went to the Israelis and he said, "Hey, I invented this big gun. It's so big you have to lean it against a mountain and then you can shoot. You

[1:21:59] couldn't There's no guidance system. It's just a giant bullet. Yeah. Right. The the size of a bus. >> Yeah. >> And the Israelis said, "Get out of here. We're not interested in your stupid gun." >> And the Iraqis said, "We'll take it." >> Big gun. >> Yeah. >> That's the one. >> Yeah. >> What? >> So the Iraqis bought the big gun. >> Yeah. And they couldn't figure out flying things.

[1:22:29] Axe. Is this a good demonstration of the big gun? >> No. Yes. >> Is it project? No. No. It's It's Gerald. Gerald. Gerald Bull. Big gun. Okay. Well, we'll find it. Dr. Bull's big gun. So, the Iraqis, every time they would try to use it to to experiment, >> it would crack and they had to keep

[1:23:01] repairing it. Finally, they they came up with this idea of using something that they called the condom. >> Okay? >> But instead of going over the gun, it went inside the barrel so that the barrel was smoother. >> Okay? As soon as they figured out that that condom would work, the Israelis bombed the gun and they murdered Gerald Bull in Brussels. >> So why would they murder a judge? >> Cuz they don't want him making any more guns for the Iraqis.

[1:23:31] >> But he's what is he's he's American, isn't he? >> He was British. >> British. But the point there it was that Saddam had been planning for something bigger regionwide and he thought, "Well, I've got the Scuds. The Scuds aren't very reliable. I'm going to try this big gun and see if maybe this will work because we can fire things at Israel." >> Yeah. >> Using the big gun. But >> they would they would kill the inventor. >> Yeah. >> That's just that that >> that's a very Israeli thing to do. >> So that summarizes Mossad for you.

[1:24:02] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They just >> But the inventor is just the guy who invented the >> Mhm. >> He has nothing to do with Iraq. >> No, >> just kill him just to get get rid of the threat. >> Nobody else would buy this stupid gun. >> Only the Iraqis were willing to buy it. >> Kill the Iraqis. >> Yeah. >> Why would you go? >> Why you kill him? Kill the Iraqis instead. >> Kill your enemy. >> Weird how they how they work. And again, okay, so um the desert so we spoke about desert sword. >> Mhm. M >> and then we spoke about Desert Storm that we all know at Desert Desert

[1:24:34] >> Shield and Desert Sword >> Sword and then >> then Desert Storm was the end >> the end. Um so we all know the details of Desert Storm. We know we've we've spoken about it at least here in Kuwait and in a lot of documentaries. >> This information is out, but I'm trying to gather as much information from you being a witness to what has happened. >> Right. Um, so >> and I'm proud to say, >> yeah, >> that at least I had the presence of mind as this was happening to tell myself this is historic.

[1:25:05] This is probably never going to happen to me again in my life and I need to take pictures and I need to remember this. So, liberation day. >> Yeah. Where were you? Um, did you guys So, we waited again. I'm just going to recap the most important information. So the the the sky scanner, what do you call it? The um uh what do you >> the satellite >> that came through in time. So now we know where all the Iraqis are. >> Um a good picture of them. He told

[1:25:35] Gorbachov as the states told him, listen, do not tell the Iraqis. He said, okay, I won't tell the Iraqis. Everything is in place. All the troops are there. Schwariskov commander is ready. Was the date set beforehand in terms of going in on the 24th of February? >> That's a good question. Um, if it was set, the White House never shared it with us. So, the president set a final final deadline. I remember a colleague

[1:26:07] coming by my desk and he looked at me and he said, "Tick tock, tick tock." I said, "I know I'm going crazy. It could happen like now. It could happen a week from now, a month from now. I I I'm going crazy. >> So So this is happening with with Trump as well and Iran. >> Yeah. >> So let's speak about this situation cuz this situation is very relevant for today as well. >> Yes. >> The how what is No one knows when the command is going to come from the president, right? And that's done on purpose. >> Yes.

[1:26:38] >> Because the fewer people that know, the fewer chances there are that it will leak. >> Yeah. And you can't risk some reporter hearing it from somebody who's talking too much and the next thing you know, Saddam Hussein knows it's going to happen Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. You know, it has to be a secret. It has to be compartmentalized. So the CIA director probably knew, the the deputy director probably knew, DoD, of course they knew. State, I'm not sure you would really tell state. They don't

[1:27:09] have a need to know. So you were just ready waiting for the Where were you at the time? >> Sitting right there at my desk in CIA headquarters. >> Oh, you mean on liberation day? Yeah. >> No, no, no. I was in uh Dahan. >> Yeah. We were just waiting waiting. What's going to happen? We don't know. Nobody's telling us. So, we're just sitting there. >> Walk me through this this day. What? >> So, we're in this we're there's a there's an American base there and we set up cubicles in this base. So, we at least had a workstation and uh

[1:27:42] it was the loneliest workstation I've ever had because you know it's temporary but you don't know if it's going to be for what 3 days or 3 months or what. So, I don't have anything there. No pictures, no books, no nothing. I had a map, a map of Iraq. That was all I had up there. And um and we were all like that. I mean, there were maybe four or five CIA people. The rest were all military. And then, of course, the Kuwaitis and the Saudis. And

[1:28:13] so, this colleague of mine comes up and he says, "Tick-tock, tick tock." I said, "I'm going crazy. I I want to go in. I want to do whatever they want me to do. I want to even if they want me to fight, and I'm not a fighter, but if they want me to fight, you know, >> you were an analyst at the time." >> Yeah, I was I was just an analyst. Yeah. And um and he said it's it's going to happen sooner rather than later. He said the president's very serious about this. He's not going to play games with Saddam and say, "Oh, you know, I'm going to throw Saddam off offkilter

[1:28:45] and maybe it's going to happen today and maybe it's going to happen a week from today." Uh-uh. No. We said this is the deadline. That means it's the deadline. We're going to go in and we're going to start killing Iraqis. And that's that's what happened. I mean, it was like the minute that the deadline came, we just started moving. Now, we were in the back of this line because, of course, there's actual fighting going on at the front. And then Schwarzoff led that flank and was hitting from the from the north. And so, we let those guys do

[1:29:18] their thing. We went in with the Marines. there was a contingent of Marines um whose job it was solely to secure the American embassy in Kuwait. Now, this was the old American embassy which was right by Kuwait Towers, walking distance to Kuwait Towers and um and it was in bad condition, >> but our job was to go in, open it up. Ambassador Ganim led all of

[1:29:50] us and then he sent the first cable and I'll never forget it. It said, "American Embassy Kuwait City is now open for business." >> Mhm. And just reading that sentence made me think, "We've won." >> Yeah. >> We've won. And I mean like the war itself only lasted but what? >> Two days. >> Two and a half days. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. And then um there was a story that you with the tunk. [snorts] >> Are we allowed to tell this story?

[1:30:22] >> Sure. And I'll send you a picture of it. >> Yeah. >> I worked with a really fun group of young State Department guys. >> Two of the three are ambassadors now, which is hilarious to me. [laughter] One of them got so drunk one night he made an international call. when that was expensive and hard to do. >> Yeah. >> And he passed out while he was still on the phone with this girl. >> And he got a bill a month later for

[1:30:56] a,000 KD. >> Wow. >> She kept trying to hang up the phone and it wouldn't disconnect. And she could hear him snoring, but he was so drunk. Anyway, um there were Iraqi munitions everywhere. Literally everywhere. We had very strict orders to stay on the hard pack. We were not allowed to walk in the desert. We were not allowed to walk off the sidewalk or off the road cuz there were mines everywhere. I'll send you pictures that you're not going to

[1:31:27] believe your eyes. Just mines, grenades, guns, ammunitions, rocket launchers. One of these State Department guys, we were out in the desert. We went to Ahmedi one weekend and he picked up a fully loaded rocket launcher and we said, "You got to put it down. We're not allowed to touch this stuff. It could be booby trapped." He said, "No, I've always wanted to shoot one." And he fired it and it shot the rocket, but it blew his eardrum out. >> Wow. >> And he had to be evacuated to Switzerland for surgery to fix his ear.

[1:31:58] Oh, he got in so much trouble. But we we loved Ambassador Ganim. He loved Kuwait and the Kuwaiti people and he was just such a good guy. >> Yeah. >> We decided to do something ridiculous and we we found an Iraqi tank right here in Kuwait City >> and it it started up. We went in, we you know tried to start it and it started up. >> Wow. >> So we drove it to the embassy and um

[1:32:29] then we opened the hatch. They saw it was us. We said, "We've confiscated this Iraqi tank. We're taking it as a as a uh an example of war booty, right? Our souvenir of our victory against the Iraqis." And the guy opened the gate and we drove it in at the back of the embassy. It's where the swimming pool was. We all learned how to scuba dive there. >> And uh and we drove it onto the embassy grounds and then they closed the gate. And then the ambassador hours later, he

[1:33:01] comes in and he says, "Who put an Iraqi tank on my embassy grounds?" >> Yeah, that's the way he he'd look at it as a >> Yeah. >> as an ambassador. >> And we said, "Well, we thought it would make kind of a fun souvenir." He said, "Are there any rockets inside that thing?" And we said, we didn't see any rockets. It was just the tank. He said, "I should expel all of you guys, but you're good at what you do, so I won't." Okay, we can keep the tank. We'll keep

[1:33:33] it as a souvenir. Um, but when you walked into Kuwait, that was happening. Yes. The day we arrived in Kuwait, this is a typical picture from 12:00 noon. the Iraqis in in the weeks before the liberation, we started getting intelligence just in little bits and pieces that the Iraqis were placing explosives. Oh, that's me with two of the three guys. >> So, we enhanced it a little bit. >> Yeah, you did a good job. >> Yeah, we enhanced it.

[1:34:04] >> I'm in the middle, but I I look very >> AI. >> Yeah, it is better. It is >> I look very AI. >> Now, there's another one which which is better. Okay, I did I did too. knew it. >> So, we came in, as I said, at the very back of the the contingent that was moving north behind behind the military. And for weeks in advance, we started getting these bits of intelligence that the Iraqis were putting explosives on all of the oil wells in the country. All of them. It was something like 640 that

[1:34:35] that I recall, although I know you looked it up and it was between 600 and 800. I think the number was 640. >> Yeah. These pictures were taken in the middle of the day. >> So for the listeners, this is a a a an oil well on fire and it's dark. It looks like it's at night, but because of the fumes, [snorts] it has covered the >> and droplets of oil >> and droplets. Yeah. So it covered all of the uh layers. >> The whole desert was black. So the whole desert was blackened and that can be in 12:00 p.m. >> I told you I had been in Tif and from

[1:35:06] Tif I went to Riyad and the fires were so bad that they blocked out the sun in Riad. >> Wow. >> And I remember saying, "Oh my god, what's it going to be like in Kuwait City when we get there? >> This is really bad." >> Imagine the health repercussion. >> Oh, well, there were two things. I had to throw away all my clothes when I got home because they were just covered in little specks of oil. And then when I got back to CIA headquarters, they made me fill out a workman's compensation form. They said just in case you develop

[1:35:38] lung disease. It'll be, you know, on the record that you've been breathing in oil for all these months. >> A lot of people developed a lot of kids developed asthma. >> Yeah. >> Um, a lot of kids from a lot of people from my age developed asthma. I knew a lot of people and then when I asked I thought that was normal, they said, "No, >> no, it's from the fires." >> From the fires. Yeah. Reddadair was an American oil fire specialist from the state of North Dakota. He would, you know, every once in a while there's an accident and and a well blows up. And so

[1:36:09] his job was to go to Texas or Louisiana or Oklahoma or wherever it happened to be and put the fire out. One fire, not 640 fires. So he assembled an international team, Americans, Kuwaitis. I think there was some British to the best of my recollection from the North Sea. >> I think there was also I'm not too sure but let's search it. I think I think there were Scandinavians as well. >> There there probably were because the Norwegians know how to work with things like this. >> So there were two problems. Number one

[1:36:40] was the fires. Number two was even when the fire goes out, there's still oil gushing out of the ground like shooting 100 meters into the sky. And so Reddit dare, God bless him. He came up with this idea. He bought a Rolls-Royce jet engine and they rigged it to put it over the fire and you turn on the jet engine and it was so strong that it blew the fire out, >> but the oil is still gushing out of the

[1:37:11] ground. Well, when it was finally cool enough, then they could cap it like they could any broken well. And little by little by little, they capped every one of those 600 plus wells. That's how it was done. Huh. >> Yeah. It was an environmental catastrophe. >> There's a photo of an of an animal. I think it was a flamingo or it was a bird. A bird. A bird. I think there was a bird. Yeah. I need to find try to find that photo. I think that the photo explains um >> what kind of person would do something

[1:37:42] like that. >> It's very ugly what he did and you know it's just you seeing all of your wealth. Imagine someone just pokes a hole a big hole in your bank account. >> I'm glad you brought that up. I remember I remember the prime minister well Shik Sad at the time was prime minister. I remember him telling Ambassador Ganim that in 1990, for the first time in Kuwait's history, it made more money from its investments than it made from the sale of oil. >> Wow. >> And then the war just

[1:38:12] >> Yeah. >> It set the country back 20 years. >> Yeah. Because that was the plan of the the foreign investment fund. >> Yeah. Because someday there won't be any oil. and >> and Jabar the Amir he was the uh minister of finance before he was >> that's exactly right >> he developed he was if anything he was really good with money >> uh >> he had a very long-term vision >> yeah yeah so he developed that fund and I think it was in the 70s it was the first

[1:38:43] >> the first sovereign wealth that's exactly right >> so he developed it just to be able to put a plan for which is the uh the next the future generations right >> that's Right. >> Um and and and we had to dig into it to be able to to pay for for for the war and uh with >> and then the reconstruction >> and then I think we just recently we just got all all of our money back from uh uh from Iraq. But but it's not the same paying >> it's not it's not the same >> not the same all these years.

[1:39:15] >> Yeah. If if I destroy your legacy no matter how much I try to pay you corrant see this. >> Oh it's just awful. Yeah. So it was a huge environmental attack on us as well. It >> sure was. >> It was a huge environmental attack. >> I remember people saying at the time that they weren't sure the country could ever recover environmentally from this. >> And it did. >> It did. But the desert was literally black for a long look at this. >> Look at that. See See what I mean?

[1:39:46] Black. >> Yeah. >> So there's this layer of oil. >> Wow. >> Over everything. And then don't forget the oil is so thick. >> Yeah. >> The skies are so dark you can't see if you're driving off the road. >> When we were coming into Kuwait um on liberation day, there were two French journalists that were behind us and they went off the road. The fires were so hot that they turned the sand to glass in some places. And

[1:40:18] when they went off the road, they went onto this lake of oil on this sheet of glass of melted sand, they got out of the car to look to see where are we? How did we get off the road? And they all fell through the glass and the their bodies were just vaporized. It was so hot. They they never survived. They never found the bodies. They just >> they couldn't find the bodies. >> Disintegrated. >> Mhm. >> It was that dangerous, huh? It was that dangerous. And in the meantime, there

[1:40:49] are mines and weapons and grenades and everywhere laying all over the ground. >> I like this photo. Look at this. >> Look at that. It's incredible. >> Yeah, this is Yeah, this this this tells you this this shows a lot, you know. You can just stare at this photo and you can just >> see what was happening, you know. And that this is what I like about photos. >> Yeah. They document. They document moments. >> That's right. >> I like photos more than videos cuz a

[1:41:21] moment you can see so much in a moment than >> I agree with you. >> Right. >> I agree with you. >> Yeah. >> And then with this kind of environment, you can't, you know, eat the fish. You can't grow anything. >> No. So all the food is coming from outside of Kuwait. Every morning these Iranian Dows would would arrive at Kuwait Tower towers and everybody would go over there and buy, you know, whatever they had that day. Lettuce, pomegranates, apples, anything, whatever they happen to have. For the Americans, they would fly our food in on

[1:41:51] helicopters. So we we would get these, they're called MREs, meals ready to eat, and they were leftover from the Vietnam War. They all had dates on them from the 1960s, but these meals are good for 40, 50 years. They're vacuum sealed. >> What did I just hear? >> I know, right? It's crazy. [laughter] >> So, you got me you you had meals from the 60s. >> But the problem was they are specifically designed to be very high calorie. >> Yeah. Oh, very high calorie. >> So, instead of, you know, 800 calories, it has 5,000 calories to give you energy

[1:42:24] to fight. So I gained, you know, 10 kilos, 15 kilos while I was here. What would the typical meal be? >> Some of them were just disgusting. Some of them were delicious. Like for example, they one was the main course was Swedish meatballs or they had uh >> that was a delicious one. >> That was the best one. >> What was the first one? >> They had mushroom and cheese omelette. This is a 40-year-old omelette. You were eating 30-year-old omelette. or they had

[1:42:56] um spicy Mexican, you know, ground beef, whatever it was. I don't remember. But everyone was there were like there were like >> 10 different ones. And they all came with a little package of freeze-dried coffee, a little tiny teeny bottle of hot sauce. >> Mhm. >> Um and um and a cookie, a cracker, something sweet. >> So you would have two or two meals a day. >> Yeah. Two or three. I we I would have two of those >> and then whatever I could buy from the Iranians. And there was one store that

[1:43:28] reopened >> near the the hotel across from the embassy. And all they had was bread. So I would go in and say and he would say, "Yes, yes." And if the if I was working late, I'd go in and say, "Nope, no more no more bread. worry. I'll show you a logo. Maybe it might ring a bell because there's um this uh company called Matahan. It's

[1:43:58] partly owned by the government. >> Ah, >> and all they do is just bread. >> Oh, that that might be it. >> Might be it. Yeah. And they'll do fresh bread every day. >> Oh, I'll tell you what. They put us in a house. We There was nowhere to live, right? The Iraqis had destroyed everything. And the hotel had no water and no electricity. So they put us in a house. >> They destroyed everything, huh? >> They destroyed everything. The country was just ruined. And so um I I I slept in this house. It was

[1:44:29] absolutely filthy. It might be the filthiest place I've ever had to sleep. >> And you've been to >> Oh, I've been to 72 countries. >> 72 countries. >> I've been to the worst places on earth. I've been to Yemen five times. Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eratria, Pakistan, terrible places. I woke up one morning and I I was laying on the pillow and I opened my eye and there was a mouse on the pillow and he was looking at me and I thought, gh I I found some mouse

[1:45:02] traps. I found some mouse traps at the embassy that had been left over from before the war. And I thought, I'm going to catch that mouse. And I still remember I caught 23 mice in the house. Yeah. Because >> the Iraqis I mean there's nobody that's gonna clean the house. >> Yeah. >> Right. And the Iraqis have you know broken the windows and they stole the furniture and >> so so what was the state of the embassy? So this is the >> Was it this?

[1:45:32] >> Yes, that was it. >> Yeah. >> Oh my gosh. Yes. >> Yeah. >> That was it. They had bread every day. you know, we had the this is one of a few companies in Kuwait that we're very proud of. >> Excellent. >> Um, it's a it's partly owned by it's like the BBC, partly owned by the government, >> run by the almost by the government, but it's one of the things that we're very proud of. >> Excellent. >> Um, I was going to I was going to say something. Yeah. So, the the the American embassy, what was the state of the American embassy when when you walked into the embassy?

[1:46:03] >> Well, I should preface it by saying that the American embassy was very old already. Yeah. >> And the Amir of Bahrain owned the land and he had already come to us before the war and he said, "Listen, I want you guys out. I'd like to tear down the embassy and build a hotel." And we were like, "Yeah, well, okay. All right. We'll look for some land." And then the war happened. And so we knew we were going to build a new embassy anyway. So we weren't making

[1:46:33] repairs. So it was a terrible embassy anyway. Yeah. >> And then after, you know, September, October, November, December, January, February, 6 months of being abandoned with, you know, dust storms and it's raining oil and >> Yeah. Yeah. And you probably have uh soldiers break in and >> Oh my god. And and they did. >> And take tours inside. >> Yeah, of course. >> So, were the ambassador did he did he evacuate before the No invasion? We had an ambassador here, the previous

[1:47:05] ambassador who evacuated um and then I don't remember if he was held hostage. All of my colleagues in the embassy were held as what they called human shields in Baghdad. They they were chained to um machinery in in Iraqi factories because the Iraqis said, "Oh, well, they won't bomb the factories if there are Americans chained to the to the machines. The job is sometimes you're going to

[1:47:37] die, right? If you're an American diplomat or an American intelligence officer, God forbid. It's a terrible thing, but sometimes you're going to be in a situation where you might die. And so we continued to bomb the factories. And then finally, Saddam let them go and they all drove in a caravan to Aman. But um the ambassador retired, he didn't come back and was replaced by Ambassador Skip Ganim. He was one of the finest men I've ever worked for anywhere anywhere in the world. I I've been I've been

[1:48:07] unusually fortunate in that I've worked for some really great ambassadors. Chaz Freeman in Riad, Skip Ganim in Kuwait, David Ransom in Bahrain. These were really great diplomats, leaders. and um he had a vision for exactly what he wanted to do uh with the Kuwaitis. He was joined at the hip with the Kuwaitis both in Tif and in Washington. And so he

[1:48:40] came in on that very first day. He didn't care what the danger was. Okay. So let's let's fast forward. So after well during the liberation um from what I know and you can confirm um the information is they you didn't just hit the Iraqis in Kuwait you also hit them in Baad >> hit them everywhere. >> Yeah Basra Baghdad >> all over the country >> that was on between the 24th and it didn't stop right there was another and then there was an uprising against

[1:49:12] Saddam from the Kurds and the Shia from the south. >> That's right. And then did you as Americans try to protect them or >> this is this is where President Bush made a made a mistake. Now he explains himself in his in his memoir. But man, I remember I remember watching his press conference on TV where he said we were going to stop that we had promised the Egyptians and the Syrians that we would not try to overthrow Saddam because they were worried about the Iranians.

[1:49:44] So, well, the the Egyptians were and um and so he said he was calling for a ceasefire and we were like, "What? Ceasefire? We're winning? Why would we stop shooting if we're winning? We had chased them all the way back to Baghdad. If we if we continued to Baghdad, we could overthrow Saddam in 1991." >> Yeah. >> He had promised President Mubarak of Egypt that we would stop. And he said that if we hadn't stopped, we would have

[1:50:16] lost all of our Arab partners because they didn't want to see him overthrown. They just wanted to see him pushed out of Kuwait. So [snorts] Saddam immediately began to bomb the Kurds and the uh and the Shia. So then we we created these nofly zones. Well, at first before the no-fly zones, we passed we we forced the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution um

[1:50:46] banning the bombing of the Kurds in the Shia at the risk of American fighter jets shooting Iraqi jets down. And we did like like I said, by the end of it, there was no such thing as the Iraqi Air Force. But then once we we banned fixedwing aircraft, yeah, no problem. The Iraqis then just started shooting at them with helicopters. >> That wasn't banned. >> That wasn't banned, which was a stupid mistake that the American government had made.

[1:51:17] >> So then we had to create the no-fly zones. And this was this constant patrolling of the northern third of Iraq and the southern third of Iraq. And anytime the Iraqis would cross the line, we would shoot down the the plane or the helicopter. But then that that went through the Bush presidency and went through the Clinton presidency into the George W. Bush presidency. It's like what what are we doing? >> He was just annihilating his his people.

[1:51:48] >> Yeah. Yeah. It's like either we're serious about this or we're not serious about this. One or the other. >> There the Iraqis were sanctioned. >> Yes. >> At the time. And they were the Iraqi people were suffering >> very very badly. >> They were suffering. Um they've again look and this is the thing this is the tra tragedy of having bad leaders is they can put their people into situations and >> people a lot of people will blame the Americans or the Kuwaitis or what have you. But we didn't ask to be invaded. We

[1:52:21] didn't ask to to have our country destroyed. >> That's right. >> Why should we be responsible for this country's leader's decision? And if he's going to do this to his people >> Yes. then he's the person to blame. It's not people, it's not other countries surrounding defending themselves from a crazy person. >> You know, the conventional wisdom at the CIA at the time, the the analysis at the CIA was there was probably some Sunni general who was willing to shoot him. There had to be somebody.

[1:52:53] >> That had to be right. >> Right. That that was our analysis. Probably >> somebody from Tit. >> So So you can recruit him. Yeah. >> So, you were looking to recruit someone to to kill Saddam, >> but everybody was so terrified of him. >> No one no one could do it. >> They didn't dare try >> or think about it. >> No. >> So, everyone everyone was scared to overthrow Saddam. So, >> and that's actually what led me to switch to counterterrorism operations. I was like, I can't keep doing this. Year after year after year, it's the same thing. Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. I was I was

[1:53:26] ready to be promoted to the seniormost analytic level and my boss said to get the promotion you need to write a national intelligence estimate an NIE this is the highest level paper that the intelligence community produces and it's it represents the entire intelligence community you most countries have one intelligence service or maybe two one for foreign one for domestic we have 18 18 different intelligence agencies in the US government and they all have to

[1:53:57] agree. So my boss said that the president wants a paper and he wants it to be called Iraq Saddam's next 12 months and he wanted me to predict what Saddam would do in the next 12 months. So this was what is Saddam going to do in 1997. Okay. So I said Saddam could threaten the Kurds, he could threaten the Shia, he could threaten Kuwait.

[1:54:28] And so I write this. It's maybe 40 pages long. >> There's nothing new though. >> No, nothing. Literally nothing. And so we call a meeting of the entire intelligence community. These are very, very difficult coordination sessions. And here's what they do. All 18 of us plus the national intelligence officer who is chairing the meeting. We're all sitting around this conference room table. And he says, "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, first sentence,

[1:54:58] Saddam Hussein will continue to be challenged by Western powers throughout 1997. Does anybody have any changes?" And all 18 have to say, "That sentence looks good." And then you read the second sentence. >> Oh wow. >> For 40 pages. >> Oh, no way. >> Uhhuh. So at the end of it, it took about six hours. At the end of it, the national intelligence officer comes up to me and he says, "That was the fastest

[1:55:30] coordination session I have ever presided over." And I said, "Ben, I'm ashamed of this paper. Threatened the Kurds, threatened the Shia, threatened the Kuwaitis. All I needed to do is take the last five of these and change the date. >> I said, "I'm embarrassed that the president's going to read this." He said, "No, no, this was good. This was good." They sent it to the president. He sends it back and he writes on the cover, "Excellent." And I said, "I quit. >> There's nothing that you can

[1:56:01] >> I quit." >> Clearly, Bill Clinton was not serious about challenging Saddam Hussein. I said, I'm not going to do this for three more years. So, I said, I'm going to go I'm going to go into operations. I need some excitement in my life. I'm not doing this anymore. >> And this is when you switch to uh Greece. We spoke about this on the first episode. Yeah. >> So, whoever wants to listen to the rest of the story, go to the first episode and then we're also going to speak about Afghanistan in the first episode, but now we're going to come back to where we left from the first episode, which is

[1:56:31] relevant >> to to Kuwait, which is Iraq. >> Mhm. So what happened and now I have I've read your book and I've made a couple of notes which I think is very important what that you've mentioned in your book. You said on so that was a few months before the invasion of Iraq or the liberation depending on the narrative you'd like to believe in. >> Um so on August 1st 2002 a few months before the invasion

[1:57:01] you were exposed to the information of invading Iraq in spring 2003. That was before Congress. >> Oh yeah. >> Before >> Congress had no idea. >> Before before anyone signing up to the plan, >> the CIA exposed you to obviously you had to sign some. Tell me the story. >> Well, I had uh on the strength of the Abu Zuba capture in Pakistan. I was a star when I got back to headquarters. And so the deputy director for operations of the whole CIA asked me to

[1:57:31] be his assistant. This was a very very highly soughtafter position. And so, and I hadn't even applied for it. He chose me to be his assistant. In that position, you have access to literally everything that the CIA is doing everywhere in the world. >> Wow. >> It's a very heavy job. >> So, on my first day, I went up to the seven, we were on the seventh floor, which is the leadership floor. The director is there, the deputy director,

[1:58:03] the executive director, and all the associate deputy directors. Very big deal. And you know, you're walking down the hall and one day, oh, but there's the president. Oh, there's the vice president. Oh, the secretary of defense came for a visit. It's a big deal. >> So, I go in on the very first day and I said like this. I said, "So, what are we doing?" And he says, "Actually, I can't tell you. go to the sixth floor to the office of security. They have some secrecy agreements they need for you to

[1:58:35] sign. I said, "Okay." I go down the sixth floor, knock on the door. I knew the guy, the security officer. So, his name was John as well. So, I go in, I said, "John, what do you have for me?" He had six secrecy agreements laid out on the desk. And he said, "You got to sign all these." Each one was for a different compartment. A compartment is information above top secret. It's not just top secret, but it's top secret and it has a code word. So only if you are signed into that code word are you allowed to know the information.

[1:59:08] >> There were times when I went to brief. I briefed the director every morning at 7:00 and there were a couple of times where I started to brief and the director would say, "Stop. These deputy directors are not cleared for the information." like the deputy directors of the CIA are not cleared for the information that I'm briefing. It was crazy to me. But anyway, it >> is crazy. Who was it? Who was the director at the time? >> George Tennant. >> George Tennant. Okay. >> So, I signed the six secrecy agreements and I said, "So, what's up? What are we

[1:59:39] doing?" And he goes like this. "Well, next year we're going to invade Iraq. We're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And we're going to move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia into southern Iraq where we are going to create the world's largest air force base. Thus, he said, thus depriving Osama bin Laden of the ability to say that we are

[2:00:09] polluting the land of the two holy mosques. And I said, I said, have they lost their minds? and he said, "Yes, but it's too late. The decision's already been made." And I'm speechless. The only thing I could think to say was, "But we haven't found Bin Laden yet." >> I mean, I thought that was like this that was the only job, find Bin Laden. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And he said, "Look, the decisions

[2:00:42] already been made and the battle lines are already drawn." He said the pro-invasion um group is the office of the vice president, the office of the secretary of defense and the national security council. The anti-invasion group >> the pro against the president >> the vice president >> vice president >> the secretary of defense >> Dick Cheney secretary of defense and then who's the secretary of defense? >> Uh Don Rumsfeld >> Romsfeld >> and the national security adviser which was Condelisa Rice. >> Okay. He said, "The anti-invasion

[2:01:13] side, CIA, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff." >> I said, "This is insane." So, we go or I go back down to the office and the deputy director said to me, "Are you read in?" And I said, "Yeah, are they out of their minds?" And he said, "Yes, but it's not up to us to question it. The policy has been made. we have to implement it. And so we set out to plan the Iraq war. That's what

[2:01:46] the job was. To plan the Ara, huh? >> Mhm. >> See, this is where it gets a little bit u I don't know what to call it. It's just disappointing. >> Mhm. >> Because the Iraq war wasn't viewed as a >> It was an illegitimate. Look, if you overthrew Saddam after 1990, >> okay, that he deserved it. But we waited 12 years to do it. >> You did the ceasefire. Yeah. >> And then you came back with a a very bad

[2:02:16] reason. >> And the reasons were all lies and everybody knew they were lies. >> So the weapons of mass destruction, there's a story around the So let's talk about the reasons. So the main reason, well, the reason that you were told >> to build an air base, >> not give us bin Laden an excuse. >> Mhm. That wasn't that wasn't said in the media. No one knows about that reason. Was that the reason? >> That's what officially the reason was in the internally >> in the Yeah. In the government. Yes. >> Okay. So that's really why they were invading. >> Yeah. That's what they said.

[2:02:48] >> But they needed an excuse beyond that. We can't just invade because we feel like invading. So they came up with this weapons of mass destruction thing. I remember sitting in meetings, Fasil, sitting in meetings where analysts from the CIA and analysts from the Department of Energy were fighting so badly that they would stand up and and people would have to separate them. >> Why? Because the CIA was saying there are no weapons of mass destruction. And then the Department of Energy says yes, there are.

[2:03:19] Okay. Where where are they? Well, we need to send people in to be weapons inspectors and we're going to find those weapons. We never found any weapons because there were no weapons. I [snorts] had a theory and even after all these years, I think my theory is correct, >> which is that there were weapons of mass destruction until Hussein camel and Saddam Camel defected to Jordan in 1997 or whatever it was 90 I think it was 97.

[2:03:51] And Saddam was so worried that they were talking to the CIA. >> You saw them, right? >> Oh, yeah. I met with them. >> So, what happened? >> They defected to Jordan and King Hussein put them up in one of the palaces. There was a group of us from the CIA that flew out to Aman to debrief them. The first thing that struck me was Hussein Camel had a gun on his on his belt and I thought that was very bad

[2:04:22] manners. You're in King Hussein's palace and you're walking around with a gun. Who do you think you are? But as soon as we sat down, it was like six of us, five or six of us from the CIA and Hussein Campl and Saddam Camel were on the other side. As soon as we sat down, Hussein camel says, "All right, I need guns. I need ammunition. I need air cover. I need secure communications. And my boss says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait one second. We didn't come out here to make you president of Iraq. We came out here so

[2:04:53] you could tell us where the weapons of mass destruction are." And he said, "I'm not telling you anything. I'm a patriot." And we said, "Well, then there's no reason to carry on a conversation." That was it. That was the whole conversation. We got up and walked out. We flew back to Washington, but we planted a story that there was this CIA delegation meeting with Hussein Camel and Saddam Camel and they told the CIA everything. >> Oh, you planted that in the news. >> Uh-huh. And then we flew out.

[2:05:25] So, I think that when that story >> Why would you plant something like this? because we wanted Saddam to panic. And he did >> and he destroyed all the weapons. >> That's what you think that that happened? >> Because everything that we found in 2003, 2004 was buried in the desert and had been buried in the desert for years. We found countless Scud missiles. For example,

[2:05:56] look, nuclear. We knew there was no nuclear program. Everybody in the world agreed there's no nuclear program. Biological, it's impossible to know because you can make a biological weapons program in your kitchen. >> Yeah, >> it's just impossible to to know. Yes, there is. No, there's not. So, really, this debate was all about chemical weapons. And chemical weapons need to have a delivery system. You can't just have this bucket of chemicals. What are you going to do? Throw it on somebody? >> You have to launch it in a rocket. The

[2:06:26] Iraqis only had Scuds that that were capable of of carrying a chemical payload. And there were no Scuds. So we found Scuds buried in the desert, ruined, not good for anything. And we think that they had been there since 1997. >> So St. Camel and uh Saddam Camel um went back. They went back and as soon as they got to the Iraqi border, Uday murdered

[2:06:57] them both. >> Yeah. >> In a hail of gunfire. Murdered them both. >> Yeah. >> They had begged Saddam's forgiveness. And he publicly forgave them and said, "Come on back." As soon as they got to the border, they were murdered. >> I think they spent one I think. No, they spent one There's a story behind it. I think they spent one they were supposed to spend the night with their family but they told them no we're going to take you somewhere to meet Saddam and all that and they just they just took them I'm not too sure of the story but they took them I'm sure they took them somewhere

[2:07:27] >> not knowing where will they go just like how is it might be your birthday party or your funeral or your funeral and death sentence right >> anyway so weapons of mass destruction there is a story about the the state of union speech by George Bush yeah I got to the office. In [snorts] this job as the as the assistant to the deputy director, I'm getting 10 15,000 cables a day. And I have to boil those 10 or 15,000 cables

[2:07:59] to the five or six most important ones that I'm going to brief to the director the next morning at 7:00. So I would take one day off a week, Sunday, and I would visit my children. I was divorced. And that meant I had 25 or 30,000 cables the next day. So I would go I would visit my children on Sunday and then I would go in at Sunday night

[2:08:30] to try to clear out the cables. >> Did you know tough stuff with you that can help you do that? You're looking at him. >> Oh, wow. >> Yeah. So, I go in one Sunday night and and normally Monday through Saturday, I'm at my desk at 3:45 in the morning, right? And I'm going through it takes me hours to go through the cables so that I'm ready by 6:30. My boss comes in, I brief him very quickly, and then we go to the director's office, and that's the big briefing at 7:00.

[2:09:02] So I wasn't sleeping much and every single day, 6 days a week, 3:45 I am at the desk. >> You know, I thought American culture you start work at 9:00. >> Most people do. >> But CIA starts at 7:00. >> CIA starts at 7:00. That's a normal the normal start. >> But you were there at 3:45 preparing for >> Yeah. Because the the big guns were coming in at 7:00, so I had to be ready for them. >> So um I get to the uh operation center. They were the ones that would hold my cables for me. the operation center. I get there 10:00 Sunday night and Colin Pal

[2:09:34] sitting at the at the table. I said to the secretary, "What's Pal doing here?" And she said, "Um, State of the Union address. He's doing some of the uh some of the reading." I said, "Oh, okay." I said, "Hi, General Pal." >> Hello. And then I went back to my office to go through my cables. One of the things that the White House does every single year, it doesn't matter who the president is, when the White House speech writers finish the State of the Union address, they send it

[2:10:05] to the CIA for clearance. And if there's something that's classified or something that the president shouldn't say, we take it out. M. >> So the speech comes over and it says that the Iraqis had tried to buy yellow cake uranium from the government of Nishair. We knew that was not true. >> Blatant lie. >> Blatant bald-faced lie. So I said to my boss, "What's up with

[2:10:36] this?" He said, "You know, Pal was here the other night." I said, "Yeah, I saw him on Sunday night." He said, "Pow took that out. Somebody put it back in." Well, Dick Cheney put it back in. So, I said, "We can't we can't let the president say that the Iraqis have a nuclear program. It's not true." So, we took it back out. >> Two nights later, I'm sitting on my couch with my girlfriend, who later became my wife, and we're watching the State of the Union address. She She was

[2:11:07] also a senior CIA officer. We're watching the State of the Union address and the president says the Iraqis went to Nishair or he said Niger. The Iraqis went to Niger and they tried to buy yellow cake uranium to make a nuclear bomb. And I was like oh my god. I turned to her and I said I said this is what the war is going to be about. >> This lie this lie that they have weapons of mass destruction. >> But he said it in that he said that the British told him

[2:11:37] >> Yeah. He said that the British government said the British government got it from the Italian government. So we asked to see the original report. I'll never forget this. So the British send us the original report and I'm looking at it. My boss and I are both were standing next to each other looking at it and I said, "It's a forgery." And he said, "100% it's a forgery." I said, "It's not even in the right font. It's like somebody just sat at their computer and wrote this pretend

[2:12:08] intelligence report and then they wrote top secret at the top and the bottom. I said it's not even in the right format. >> Mhm. >> Like somebody with one day of experience could see that this is a this is a fake report. >> Yeah. >> They didn't care. >> So where does the Brits and Blair and see see this where was Dick Cheney and Tony Blair's right? Tony Blair was was a lap dog for for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. He was he was such a weak little

[2:12:42] yes man that he would do anything Bush and Cheney told him to do at the cost of his own legacy. >> Why Why would he do that though? You being someone in the CIA looking at all of this, what was in their interest? You know, I think at the end of the day, Tony Blair was was a neoliberal imperialist. That's really what it came down to. Yeah, he was a member of the Labor Party. That didn't really matter in the end. He was an imperialist. That's what was more important. And he'll always be seen as as a tool of the

[2:13:16] Americans. Do you think the the British, the Americans, and maybe other countries took advantage of uh um Iraq and basically colon colonized Iraq and took a lot of resources? >> Oh, actually, no. >> No, >> I think that was the plan. I think that's what the Bush administration wanted to do. Yes. take the oil. But

[2:13:47] once Saddam was overthrown, see, they really believed that this Sunni general that we had not yet met was going to just come out of the shadows and say, "I am now the president of Iraq." And >> so, so they didn't plan to hand it over to >> the Shia. Absolutely not. But they were idiots. I'll tell you another story, and this is why I'm confident that I'm right. The night before the invasion, George Tennant is the CIA director and he asks me to take notes in the final

[2:14:20] uh it's called a principles committee meeting. So the principles are the president, he chairs the meeting, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser, the two well the deputy national security adviser and the director uh for the Middle East and then the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the vice chairman and the head of central command uh general Tommy Franks at the time. >> Big meeting. >> Big meeting. So, we're in the conference

[2:14:52] room. George is sitting here at the table just like this. I'm sitting directly behind him taking the notes and it's all TVs. There's the vice president, the secretary of state, secretary of defense, conda rice, this general, that general, the other general, all on these TVs, right? So, the vice president, I don't know why the president the president wasn't at that meeting. He was supposed to chair it and something came up and he was doing something else. I think this was Dick Cheny's horse. >> So Cheney was chairing the meeting.

[2:15:23] Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You know, I often wondered if Bush even realized that he was the president. >> Like does does Bush realize that he's actually been elected the president or does Bush think Cheney is the president? >> No, he just gave everything to Cheney. >> He just gave everything to Cheney. Like literally everything. >> Yeah. >> Unprecedented in American history. So Cheney starts off by saying, "General Franks, why don't you start the briefing with the order of battle?" Do you know what the order of battle is? I hate

[2:15:53] order of battle briefings. They're so boring. They mean nothing to me. So they have this big map of uh Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. And they say the first mountain division is located 20 kilometers south of here and the the horses are here and the tanks are there and the this platoon is moving south and I don't care where your little army men are. Just do what your thing. I don't need to know the details. So I'm writing

[2:16:24] this boring stuff down. And then General Frank says, "If all goes as planned, we can be in Tehran by August." What? And George, George is just sitting there like this, like stone. And he turns off his microphone and he turns to me and he says, "Did he say Baghdad or did he say Thrron?" And I said, "He said Tehran." And George says, "Are they out of their

[2:16:55] minds? >> What the hell?" >> And then he turns the microphone back on. And the rest of the meeting, he just is sitting there like this. So, the meeting ends. >> Was George Tennant a good guy? >> I have a uh George and I had our ups and downs. George was a patriot, but he was not a good guy. >> Okay. George suffered from what is called um um imposttor syndrome. Do you know what

[2:17:27] that is? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. when you think that you're always uh when you go to a big meeting for example thinking that you haven't I'm not supposed to be here I'm I'm just a guy what am I doing here why am I the CIA director I don't know what I'm doing >> you know yeah >> so as we're getting up to leave the the director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council says he's like giddy he's so gleeful he says tomorrow when when we cross that border,

[2:17:59] they're going to throw flowers at us. >> Oh, >> and I remember being shocked. So, I get back to the office >> and the deputy director says, "How did the meeting go?" And I said, "Did you know we were going to invade Iran?" And he said, "Are they still talking about that? We're not going to invade Iran." I said, "Are these people insane?" And he said, "Yes, they're insane and they have no understanding of history." He said, "We're not going to invade Iran. We're not going to get

[2:18:29] anywhere near Iran." >> Why did they really invade Iraq? Just because of what? >> They believed that once Iraq fell, it was going to start this movement in the region and then Iran was going to fall and Libya was going to fall and Somalia was going to fall and Syria was going to fall and we were going to be the conqueror of all these countries and we were going to have these friendly pro-western democracies. It's it's fantasy. >> You know, there's a guy who said um that

[2:19:00] there are there are >> seven seven. >> Yeah, that that was General um >> he was a Clinton administration adviser and a very good guy. General >> I saw his video yesterday. >> Yeah, we'll find it. >> We'll find it. >> General Clark. Wesley Clark. Clark. >> Okay. >> Wesley Clark. Yes. >> So, can can you comment on that and give us the context of it as well? So the week of 911, the Pentagon was ordered to come up with

[2:19:32] a long-term plan. And the long-term plan was to overthrow seven governments. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, >> Sudan, and I forget the other one, >> whatever it is. um with the idea being that they were like dominoes that once the first one fell all the others would fall right away. And General Clark said, this is kind of a famous video. It's on YouTube. He asked these other generals and he was a

[2:20:04] four-star general and he's asking other four-star generals, is this is this classified? and they said, "Yes, it's classified, but but they're nuts. These people in the White House are nuts. They think that this is actually doable." >> How much is that influenced by Israel? >> Oh, 100%. It was the Israeli plan. >> 100%. >> They were marketing it at the same time. >> The Israelis love love when the Americans will do their dirty work. They

[2:20:35] love it. So, so there was there was something in that space or in that angle happening between the White House and Israel. >> Sure. >> Every single time an Israeli prime minister would visit Washington, and I mean going back to the Ronald Reagan administration, literally every single time, they would say, "Please attack Iran. Please attack Iran. please attack

[2:21:06] Iran. And every single president would say, I'm not going to attack Iran. Until Donald Trump said, okay, I'll attack Iran. They're just just keep on trying until they find that president who's willing to >> Mhm. >> to implement what they want. And the more presidents come, the more they will develop. like like how we spoke about Apac and they go to grassroots nominees and they build more Yes. influence inside the White House. >> That's right. >> And more influence in Congress

[2:21:38] >> and more influence media. >> We were talking about Israeli influence at all levels of government. And I meant to tell you a story yesterday and I forgot. >> There's a Texas state senator. Okay, low-level. He's just some guy. He represents a small area of Texas and he emailed me and he said, "I think what you did on the torture program was very brave and I want to sponsor a a resolution to make John Kuryaku day in

[2:22:11] Texas. It doesn't really mean anything. You just get a nice thing that you can frame, a paper you can frame. It has the big gold seal on it and the governor signs it." It's it's a nice gesture. >> Okay. >> And then he called me and he said, "Listen, I'm sorry uh but this John Kiryaku day resolution, it's not it's not going to happen." I said, "Oh, okay. What happened?" He said, "Well, uh, the Israelis killed it." I said, "The Israelis." >> Oh, [snorts] >> in in Austin, Texas.

[2:22:43] >> Why would they kill it? and he said there is a dedicated Apac lobbyist just to lobby the Texas state legislature and they said no John Kiryaku day. They don't want they don't want anyone to be a hero who can be against them at one day. >> It's exactly right. See the thing is look I say they're working and they are at the end of the day if I look at them in a way where we're we're sitting here saying what are they doing in the United States and how do they have Apac how can they have that

[2:23:15] much influence on the White House influencing the White House decision on Iraq Libya Iran and what have you and objectively if you look at it you say this is a country which is working very hard uh trying to influence the greatest superpower >> to side with their interests. >> Mhm. >> And I think shame on us that we are not working to protect our interest. >> Yes. >> All right. >> I agree with you. Shame on us

[2:23:46] >> for not protecting our interests as well because our interests often don't coincide with Israeli interest. There's a famous diplomatic saying, I don't remember, I think it was Churchill, Winston Churchill, who said it, that there's no such thing as permanent friends, only permanent interests. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yes. So, let's protect our interests. >> Yeah. We should be working hard to to develop systems, to develop people. >> Exactly. And sometimes our interests coincide and then we work together. >> Yeah. But everyone has to look after their their own interests. No one's going to come and because they're doing that.

[2:24:17] >> Um Well, they're doing that and they're they're they're doing a lot of evil things. >> Mhm. the best way for us to react is not just to point it out, but to develop our own systems to be able to protect our interests. And I think that's that's the best thing that we can do at this point. So, going back to to to Iraq, I I have a question about the remember the um the playing cards that were developed. >> Yeah, sure. >> Was that developed by the CIA or FBI? >> Yeah, it was the CIA. >> CIA. Were you involved in this or did you work? >> Oh my god. I worked with a couple of guys that did and they were so proud of

[2:24:49] what they did. I thought it was kind of silly. went viral. >> It went viral. >> You can still find them on eBay. >> Yeah, it was in Kuwait. Really? Yeah, we had we had them in Kuwait, >> obviously. >> Oh, they were so proud of themselves. >> Yeah, it was a very very very clever way. >> Very clever way. They they penetrated the the culture. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's right. >> Yeah, they were very smart. [laughter] What else did you do that untold stories about what happened in Iraq? Is there something? So when when were you

[2:25:20] involved when they found out when they found out that when they found where Saddam is? >> No, I was stationed at the United Nations at the time. >> Okay. >> Which is the worst job I've ever had in my life. >> Oh, that was the job before you left. >> Yes. >> Okay. That was the worst job you had. Yeah. >> Boring. >> With a capital B. >> That was the most boring chapter in your book. >> Yeah. [laughter] Awful. Just awful. Oh my god. I hated that job. And I begged for that job. >> Yeah, you did. because I wanted to live in New York. I thought it would be fun. I spent two or three years in New York.

[2:25:50] I get promoted. I become a station chief. I had turned down two station chief positions to go to New York because my sons were young. >> You turned down really two really good ones, right? >> Two really good ones. Both in the Middle East. >> Yeah. >> But if you if you didn't turn down those options, where would you have been, do you think? You know, I probably would have retired from the CIA about five years ago if I had stayed. I would have had my my ex-wife and I used to

[2:26:21] talk about this all the time. We would have had she used to say something very funny. She she would say, "If we had stayed at the agency, um you would be recovering from your first heart attack and I would be trying to lose 20 kilos." And I said, "That's probably true. It's >> good that you're retired, though. >> The stress is terrible. You work 18our days, so you don't have any time to exercise or to eat right." And everybody ends up having a heart attack in his 50s. >> Wow. >> Yeah.

[2:26:52] >> Amazing. You spoke about um Ahmed Chalabi as well. Ahmed. >> Oh boy. I really didn't like Ahmed Chalabi. >> Ahmed Chalabi for he was he was a dissident. >> Yeah. A dissident. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> In in London was he based >> he was a based in London. >> Yeah. >> There's a there's a backstory about Ahmed Chalabi. Ahmed Chelabi was one of those very rare Shia Muslim Kurds. >> Oh wow. That's rare. >> There aren't many. >> Yeah.

[2:27:22] >> Um he left Iraq with his family in 1965. He was a child and they immigrated to to Jordan. He went to school um in the United States. I think he went to Harvard. was Harvard or Yale? I think it was Harvard. And uh got a degree in finance, went to London, got a a master's degree in finance, went back to Jordan and founded Petra Bank. >> And Petra Bank was the goto bank for

[2:27:53] Iraqi refugees. All the Iraqis living in Jordan, they all banked at Petra Bank. And then one night, Ahmed Chelabi every single dollar, $36 million, transferred it to secret accounts in Switzerland, and escaped to Syria in the trunk of his girlfriend/ secretar's car. He was found guilty and sentenced to

[2:28:25] death in absentia, >> but by then he was living in London wearing $2,000 suits and driving, you know, Rolls-Royce. So, so Chelby fancied himself the next president of Iraq and he offered himself to the CIA. Hey, if you set me up, I love the United States. I could be the president of Iraq. I'll give you the oil. We said,

[2:28:58] "Hey, we like the sound of that idea." So, we went to King Hussein and we asked him if he would give a pardon to Chelabe from this death sentence. every Iraqi in Jordan lost their life savings to this this So in 1991 um as we're getting ready to push the the Iraqis out of Kuwait, we meet with all of the different Iraqi um opposition

[2:29:28] groups in a hotel ballroom in Vienna, Austria. And I mean there were like 35 different Iraqi opposition groups. So we decided we're going to bring them all together under one group called the Iraqi National Congress. And the head of the Iraqi National Congress is going to be Ahmed Chelvi. So everybody gets to be the head of their own little groups, but overall it's going to fall under Chelaby. >> We we allocated $6 million to get the Iraqi National Congress running and then the 6

[2:30:01] million disappeared. And then Chelby was showing off his new house in Mayfair London that he just paid cash for because he every single dollar of the six million. So we issued something called a burn notice which was a a a cable that went to every CIA officer in the world and it says there's this guy Ahmed Chalabi, he's an Iraqi and all CIA personnel are forbidden from dealing with him. Cut off. Forbidden.

[2:30:31] >> Blacklisted. blacklisted and then Dick Cheney nine years later decides what about this uh Chelby guy I like this guy and we said no we issued a burn notice on him we we won't work with Chel and he said oh but I will and so they set up a new division at the Pentagon the intelligence division there had never been one before and they created an under secretary of defense for intelligence

[2:31:02] and his sole job was just to work with Chel, >> prop him up. >> Yeah. So, we're having this argument about the weapons of mass destruction at the time and we're like, there are no weapons of mass destruction. There are none. And then we start getting these cables from the Pentagon saying, "Oh, we have a reliable source and it says that there are weapons of mass destruction and they're here located at this in the in the the of Lee the u the uh garden of Saddam's palace,

[2:31:34] which of course we can't search. Okay, we want to we want to talk to the source." Nope. Top secret. You guys aren't cleared for the information. CIA can't can't you can't even know who the source is. We're like we know who the source is. The source is Chelby and he's making the whole thing up because he's we've known that for a decade. You guys are being suckered. And so he just kept with these reports. Weapons, weapons, weapons, weapons. Bush goes on TV says they have weapons of

[2:32:04] mass destruction. We invade Iraq. We never find anything. And Chelabe says, "Okay, I want to be president of Iraq now." Well, in Iraq, nobody ever heard of Ahmed Chalabi. He left in 1965. They don't know. They don't want this fat old man from London to be the president of Iraq. So, in the end, he was very briefly made minister of oil, which you know, he all that money too, and then he had a heart attack and died finally.

[2:32:36] But he was nothing but trouble from the very beginning. He was just and nothing more. >> Wow. >> Didn't know Ahmed Shi would provoke you into a very good story. >> You know, I I went out to London to see him one time and I >> That wasn't in the book. >> No, that wasn't in the book. >> Yeah. >> I went out to London to see him one time. It was it was a group of four or five of us and I I took a brand new young good-looking female analyst with

[2:33:08] me and the entire meeting was like this. This was Chelby. >> My goodness. He's a what what's the right word for him? >> Yeah. He's a >> Yeah. I wanted to punch him in the face and um and she said to me, "Listen, I'm I'm not going to the to the other meetings." Yeah, I'm I'm afraid he's going to attack me or something. And I said, "No, no, don't don't go to the meetings." "No, only the men will go. This is ridiculous." I said, "I'm going to report this. I'm tired of this guy."

[2:33:42] So, we we finally cut him off. >> You know, it's a shame that um sometimes there are space for people like this in the world. >> Mhm. >> And they're given platforms. >> Yeah. And they fail upward. >> Yeah. They fail upward. And because uh confidence is half of this. I I I believe com being confident will get you halfway there. >> I agree. >> And then you can BS your way through it. >> That happens so frequently. >> Yeah. Many people are like that and there are a lot of kind people who will just say, "Look, this is dirty business and I just don't want to get involved

[2:34:12] and they just walk away." >> Most people do. Uh most good people do. >> You know, I worked with a guy at the CIA, very very bright. I liked him and I admired his his intellect and he was moving up very fast through the uh through the ranks and he he finally got to a position of leadership in the uh counterterrorism center and then we started the torture program and I knew him. He was as left as I was. >> I said, "What are you going to do?" Because I was telling them internally,

[2:34:45] "This is a crime. It's a crime against humanity. I want no part of it. you're all going to go to prison. You're all torturers. You're going to go to prison. So I said to him, "What are you going to do?" He said, "If I if I say no, I'll never get promoted again." I said, "But you'll be able to sleep at night." >> Well, he jumped in on the side of the torturers. And then he had to double down. When the Senate torture report was published, >> he was one of the five or six co-authors

[2:35:16] of the rebuttal to the torture to the torture report saying, "No, no, torture worked. It was good. It wasn't torture. It was enhanced interrogation techniques. It didn't hurt anybody. We got great information." I was like, "Seriously?" You know what? He never worked again. People are like, "We can't take him seriously." >> Oh, that's when we damage your credibility. >> Yeah. You're gone. >> We can't believe anything you say. He was on TV all the time. And then when he came out with that book, people were like, "Ah, come on, man. >> Come on. Either you're a torturer or you're not, and you clearly are." So

[2:35:48] that was the end of it for him. >> Hopefully, it's not the end of it for us with you. Uh, John, thank you so much for for accepting our invitation. >> No, thank you for this lovely invitation. I'm so happy to be in Kuwait again. I can't tell you how grateful I am. >> Hopefully, it's not the last time. And hopefully we'll have um we'll have look this is something that we're cooking together. >> That's right. >> You might not want to to tell the audience right now, but >> stay tuned. Stay tuned. Tell them stay tuned. >> Something more exciting coming along the way uh being cooked and we can't wait to

[2:36:18] sh We can't wait to share it [music] with you one day. >> Amen. >> Till then, take it easy. Thank you, Monira. Thank you, John. Again, we'll see you soon. [music] >> [music]